«  i  i  a  a  -  *, 


ill 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE   WAR 

AND 

THE    NEW  AGE 


BY 

WILLIS    MASON    WEST 

SOMETIME    PROFESSOR    OF    HISTORY   AND    HEAD   OF   THE 

DEPARTMENT    IN    THE    UNIVERSITY 

OF   MINNESOTA 


o>Kc 


ALLYN    and    BACON 

BOSTON  NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 

ATLANTA  SAN  FRANCISCO 


COPYRIGHT.    1919. 
BY  WILLIS   MASON   WEST 


Xortoooti  }{Jrcaa 

J.  S.  Cushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


fill 


FOREWORD 

A  record  of  the  World  War  as  early  as  this  must  be  incom- 
plete and  more  or  less  marked  by  positive  errors.  Still  I  think 
it  worth  while  to  put  a  brief  survey  at  once  into  the  hands  of 
American  students,  without  waiting  for  the  fuller  light  that 
future  years  will  bring.  The  war  has  aroused  in  high-school 
boys  and  girls  a  splendid  fervor  for  freedom  and  democracy. 
The  magnificent  story  of  America's  part  in  that  war,  however 
imperfectly  told,  should  give  food  to  nourish  and  harden  that 
impulsive  fervor  into  intelligent  and  lasting  resolve. 

I  acknowledge  here  my  very  great  debt  to  my  friend  and 
former  colleague,  William  Stearns  Davis.  Through  his  kind- 
ness I  have  been  enabled  to  read  in  manuscript,  and  to  make 
free  use  of,  the  admirable  chapter  on  the  campaigns  of  the  war 
that  is  to  appear  in  the  new  edition  of  his  Roots  of  the  War. 

Willis  Mason  West. 

Windago  Farm, 
August  1,  1919. 


Ill 

1 598084 


CONTENTS 


Introduction  —  Yesterday  and  To-day    . 

CHAPTER 

I  Prussian  Autocracy  and  Militarism 

II  Making  "Alliances"  for  Peace 

III  The  Balkans 

IV  Germany  Wills  the  War 
V  The  First  Year,  1914 

VI  The  Second  Year,  1915 

VII  The  Third  Year,  1916 

VIII  The  Fourth  Year,  1917 

IX  The  Last  Year,  1918 

X  War  Efficiency  of  a  Democracy 

XI  The  World  League  and  New  Europe 

XII  Healing  Forces  .... 


1 

2 

9 

13 

22 
37 
43 
55 
59 
71 
82 
92 
106 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

YESTEEDAY  AND  TO-DAY 

The  transition  from  one  era  to  another  is  not  seen  clearly  as 
a  rule  until  long  after.  We  talk  glibly  now  of  the  beginning 
of  Modern  history,  or  of  the  Renaissance ;  but  the  men  who 
lived  in  the  year  400  a.d.,  or  1300,  were  not  many  of  them 
at  that  time  aware  of  unusual  change.  To-day,  however,  as 
never  before  in  human  history,  old  institutions  and  customs  and 
ideas  are  visibly  tottering  and  sliding  into  ruin,  and  new 
arrangements  in  society  and  government  are  springing  into 
life.     Before  our  eyes,  the  world  is  passing  into  a  new  age. 

The  event  that  especially  marks  the  end  of  the  old  era  is  the 
World  War  of  1911^-1918.  That  war  discredited  the  old  balance- 
of-power  theory,  the  age-long  system  of  military  preparedness 
by  hostile  groups  of  allied  nations,  as  the  best  safeguard  of 
world  peace  ;  and,  indirectly,  it  overthrew  autocracy  in  govern- 
ment and  infinitely  weakened  autocracy  in  industry.  It  proved 
a  war  for  democracy  and  for  peace.  And  the  event  that  es- 
pecially marks  the  opening  of  the  new  era  is  the  adoption  of  the 
plan  for  a  League  of  Nations  by  the  Peace  Congress  of  1919. 
These  two  mighty  events,  with  closely  related  movements,  are 
the  theme  of  this  small  volume. 


CHAPTER  I 


How 
Prussia 
found  profit 


German 
Liberals, 
too,  accept 
militarism 
for  its  profits 


The  German 
Empire  an 
autocracy 


PRUSSIAN   AUTOCRACY   AND   MILITARISM  —  THE 
TWIN   MONSTERS   THAT   THREATENED   THE  WORLD 

The  national  industry  of  Prussia  is  war.  —  Mirabeau. 

Every  student  knows  how  Bismarck,  supported  by  the 
divine-right  monarch,  William  I  of  Prussia,  forged  and  re- 
fashioned the  Prussian  army  in  1861-1864.  Bismarck  did  this 
by  overriding  the  Prussian  constitution  for  four  years,  against 
the  valiant  opposition  of  the  Prussian  parliament.  At  any 
moment,  if  the  King  had  weakened,  or  if  revolution  had  begun, 
the  Liberals  would  have  sent  Bismarck  to  the  scaffold  —  as 
they  constantly  threatened.  Bismarck  knew  that  he  must 
show  his  new  tool  profitable  quickly ;  and  ruthlessly  and  trickily 
he  forced  war  against  Denmark  in  1864  and  against  Austria 
in  1866. 

These  wars  doubled  Prussia  in  size  and  wealth,  and  made 
her  mistress  of  Germany.  To  their  shame,  the  old  Prussian 
Liberals  accepted  this  dazzling  bribe :  since  militarism  and 
autocracy  had  proven  profitable,  they  ceased  to  oppose  and  be- 
gan to  applaud.  Then  in  1870-1871,  Bismarck  crushed  France, 
and  made  Germany,  so  long  weak  and  despised,  the  mightiest 
force  in  European  politics.  And,  to  their  shame,  German 
Liberals  accepted  Prussianism  greedily  for  the  sake  of  these 
profits. 

The  German  Empire,  which  lasted  from  1871  to  1918,  was 
Bismarck's  work  as  the  product  of  these  wars.  It  was  a  federal 
state,  but  not  a  "  free  "  state.  Its  substates  were  mostly 
monarchies,  and  the  greatest  of  them,  Prussia,  equal  to  three 
fifths  of  all,  was  virtually  a  divine-right  autocracy.  The  King 
of  Prussia  was  ex-officio  Emperor;     and  his  autocratic  power 

2 


PRUSSIAN   AUTOCRACY  AND   MILITARISM  3 

in  Prussia  went  far  of  itself  toward  making  him  an  autocrat  in 
the  Empire.  There  was  a  federal  parliament,  chosen  by  man- 
hood suffrage,  but  that  body  was  little  more  than  a  debating 
society. 

The  imperial  autocracy  was  frugal,  and  claimed  to  be  paternal. 
It  made  justice  easy  to  secure  ;  it  guarded  against  food  adultera- 
tion —  before  most  other  countries  awoke  to  this  need ;  and 
in  other  ways  it  cared  for  the  public  health  and  material  com- 
fort. 

But  alongside  this  watchful  paternalism,  there  were  grievous 
faults.  Germany  had  been  jnade  by  violence  and  fraud,  and 
the  result  showed  in  a  spirit  of  brutal  militarism,  in  police  rule, 
and  in  the  predominance  of  the  methods  of  the  drill-sergeant 
in  private  life.  There  was  little  security  for  personal  rights. 
Trial  by  jury,  freedom  of  the  press,  freedom  of  public  meetings, 
and  free  speech  existed  in  only  a  limited  degree. 

The  Kaiser  (Emperor),  head  of  the  government  and  of  the  Kaiser  Wil- 
army,  claimed  obedience  as  of  divine  right.     This  was  pre-  helm  II( 

1888—1918 

eminently  true  of  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II,  who  came  to  the  throne 
in  1888.  As  a  youth  he  had  been  a  great  admirer  of  Bismarck, 
who,  as  Chancellor,  was  still  guiding  German  policy ;  but  it 
soon  became  plain  that  the  two  men  were  each  too  masterful 
to  work  together.  In  1890,  the  Kaiser  curtly  dismissed  the  old 
Chancellor  from  office,  and  from  that  time  to  the  end  he  himself 
was  supposed  to  control  the  policy  of  the  Empire.  William 
repeatedly  stated  the  divine-right  theory  in  as  striking  a  form  as 
ever  did  James  I  of  England  or  Louis  XIV  of  France  two  or  three 
centuries  ago.  "  On  me,  as  German  Emperor,"  he  told  his 
soldiers,  "  the  spirit  of  God  has  descended,  I  am  His  sword  and 
His  vice-regent."  "  All-Highest  "  was  a  recognized  form  of 
address  for  the  Emperor.  And  the  phrase  ironically  attributed 
to  him,  —  "  Me  and  Gott,"  —  is  no  great  exaggeration  of  the 
patronizing  tone  in  which  he  often  referred  to  the  Almighty  as 
a  partner  —  as  in  an  address  at  Berlin  in  1901  :  "  We  shall 
conquer,  even  though  we  be  surrounded  by  enemies ;  for  there 
lives  a  powerful  ally,  the  old,  good  God  in  heaven,  who,  ever 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


since  the  time  of  the  Great  Elector,  has  always  been  on  our 
side." 
The  junkers  This  autocracy  was  upheld  most  of  all  by  the  landed  squires, 
or  junkers.  Says  Dr.  Davis  (Roots  of  the  War,  188),  —  "A 
typical  junker  was  the  owner  of  a  large  landed  property  with  a 
picturesque  and  uncomfortable  ancient  schloss  (castle)  dominat- 
ing a  village  or  town,  where  peasant  children  scrambled  with 
pigs  and  chickens  in  the  great  dungheaps  before  the  houses. 
He  might  come  to  enjoy  city  life.  .  .  .  He  might  reform  his 
agricultural  methods.  .  .  .  None  the  less  he  remained  heart 
and  soul  a  country  aristocrat  .  .  .  accustomed  to  curse  his 
inferiors,  to  cane  his  servants,  and  to  despise  all  who  lived  by 
trade." 

This  class  furnished  the  officers  of  the  army.  For  most  of 
them,  indeed,  the  army  was  the  only  possible  career.  Pay  was 
pitifully  small,  and  the  nobles  were  poor.  But  the  officer's 
social  standing  made  it  easy  for  him  to  find  a  wife  among  the 
daughters  of  wealthy  merchants.  No  officer,  however,  could 
make  such  a  marriage  until  a  committee  of  higher  officers  had 
approved  the  bride  —  and  the  dower  which  was  to  atone  for  her 
ignoble  blood. 

The  autocracy  had  one  other  pillar.  The  junkers  were 
largely  Prussian  and  rural.  But  after  1870  Germany  began 
to  grow  into  a  city  Germany.  The  "  industrial  revolution," 
the  factory  system,  which  had  grown  up  in  England  before  1800 
and  in  France  by  1825,  did  not  begin  to  make  headway  in  Ger- 
many until  nearly  1870.  Then,  indeed,  manufactures  and 
trade  grew  by  leaps  —  aided  by  the  coal  and  iron  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine  and  by  subsidies  from  the  huge  war  indemnity  just 
then  robbed  of  France.  Science  became  the  servant  of  manu- 
factures as  it  had  not  before  been  in  any  country.  Especially 
was  chemistry  applied  successfully  to  industries  like  the 
manufacture  of  dyes  —  which  became  practically  a  German 
monopoly.  The  whole  artisan  class,  too,  were  trained  to 
"  efficiency  "  in  trade  schools,  —  which  were  distinctly  class 
schools,  suited  on  this  German  plan  to  an  undemocratic  land 


PRUSSIAN  AUTOCRACY  AND  MILITARISM  5 

only,  in  which  the  son  of  an  artisan  must  look  for  no  "  higher  " 
station  than  his  father. 

All  this  meant  a  tremendous  growth  of  cities.  Hamburg 
grew  from  350,000  people  in  1870  to  1,000,000  in  1910;  Berlin 
from  820,000  to  2,000,000 ;  Essen  from  50,000  to  300,000 ;  while 
many  wholly  new  centers  of  trade  appeared  where  had  been 
only  farming  hamlets.  The  population  of  the  Empire  doubled 
in  these  forty  years,  and  all  this  increase  was  a  city  increase  — 
which  meant  that  the  old  city  population  was  multiplied  four- 
fold. Along  with  this  change,  there  appeared  a  new  figure  in 
German  life,  the  princely  manufacturing  capitalist.  After  1880, 
the  thousands  of  this  class  took  their  place  —  alongside  the 
junker  nobility  —  as  a  chief  support  of  German  autocracy  with 
a  vivid  expectation  of  favor  to  be  received  in  form  of  special 
privileges.1 

The  junker  and  the  capitalist  made  public  opinion ;  but  the  The  Prus- 
autocracy  had  also  its  physical  arm.  After  1866,  the  Prussian  sia°^my 
army  system  was  extended  over  all  Germany.  The  funda- 
mental principle  was  the  universal  obligation  of  all  males  to 
serve.  The  army  was  the  armed  nation.  At  twenty  each  man 
was  supposed  to  enter  the  ranks  for  two  years'  active  service. 
For  five  years  more  he  was  a  member  of  the  "  active  reserves," 
with  two  months  in  camp  each  year.  These  reserves  were  to 
be  called  out  for  regular  service  in  case  of  war.  For  twelve 
years  more  he  was  listed  in  the  territorial  reserve  —  liable  for 
garrison  duty  in  time  of  war,  and  even  for  front  rank  service 
in  special  need.  Exemption  from  training  was  usually  allowed 
to  the  only  son  of  a  dependent  widow,  to  students  of  theology, 
and  to  those  unfit  because  of  physical  defects. 

The  Prussian  victories  of  1866  and  1870  convinced  all  Europe 
of  the  superiority  of  this  system  over  the  old  professional  armies, 


1  The  war  revealed  this  class  as  gross  exploiters,  fattening  on  their  coun- 
try's need.  In  no  other  land  did  war-profiteering  prosper  on  so  large  a 
scale  as  in  Germany,  where  the  general  misery  was  so  terrible.  This  growth 
of  huge  war-fortunes  was  shown  plainly  by  the  government's  income-tax 
reports  in  1918,  as  published  in  German  papers. 


6         THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

Europe  and  nearly  every  state  in  Europe  soon  adopted  it,  with  slight 

German  *  variations  as  to  age  and  exemptions.  Europe  became  a  group 
army  system  of  armed  camps.  Along  with  this  went  ever-increasing  atten- 
tion to  improved  rifles,  larger  cannon,  and  other  costly  arma- 
ment. The  burden  was  enormous,  and  the  direct  cost  was 
far  less  than  the  indirect  cost  involved  in  withdrawing  so 
large  a  part  of  each  man's  best  years  from  productive  work. 
England,  trusting  to  her  navy,  and  the  United  States,  trusting 
to  her  position,  were  the  only  large  countries  that  dared  refuse 
the  crushing  burden  —  and  for  England  the  cost  of  her  navy 
was  almost  as  serious.  Certain  good  results,  no  doubt,  as 
well  as  many  evil  ones,  came  from  the  military  discipline ;  but 
on  the  whole  that  army  system  was  the  most  woeful  waste  of 
human  energy  the  world  ever  saw. 

Worse  still,  this  militarism  was  a  constant  temptation  to 
war ;  and,  in  Germany,  the  worst  result  was  the  way  in  which  it 
helped  to  make  the  masses  servile  in  private  life  under  the  rule 
of  king,  junker,  and  policeman.  Flogging  and  other  brutal 
punishment  for  slight  offenses  was  the  rule  in  the  Prussian  army  ; 
and  there  are  reliably  reported  numerous  cases  of  suicide  by 
soldiers  who  were  so  mistreated  by  officers  that  they  could  no 
longer  live  in  decent  self-respect.  Those  who  submitted  to 
such  "  discipline  "  became  slaves. 

Militarism  was  one  phase  of  the  Prussian  danger  to  the 
world,  as  autocracy  was  the  other  phase.  Militarism  is 
not  the  same  thing  as  having  a  large  army,  though  it  is 
likely  to  grow  out  of  having  one.  Militarism  is  a  state  of 
mind  regarding  the  army :  a  habit  of  thinking  that  the  army 
is  the  most  important  matter,  and  of  exalting  it  above  the 
civil  powers  at  home,  and  of  trusting  to  force  in  relations 
with  other  nations  rather  than  to  justice  and  good  will  and 
reason.  In  the  long  run,  too,  militarism  leads  to  a  servile 
attitude  on  the  part  of  the  people  toward  army  officers, 
wholly  incompatible  with  democracy.1 

■War  Encyclopedia,  under  "Militarism"  and  "  Prussianism  " ;  and  C. 
Altschul's  German  Militarism  and  Its  German  Critics,  esp.  pp.  20-21. 


PRUSSIAN  AUTOCRACY  AND   MILITARISM  7 

Two  results  of  the  new  commercial  and  industrial  forces 
in  German  life  must  be  noted  before  we  are  ready  to  understand 
Germany  in  the  war  and  after. 

1.  The  new  manufacturers  clamored  for  sole  markets.     So  Germany's 

Germany  wished  a  colonial  empire.     In  1884  Bismarck  yielded   effort.for 

J  c  ^  colonial  em- 

to  this  demand,  and  after  1890  Kaiser  Wilhelm  supported  it  pire 
even  more  ardently.  In  1883  Germany  had  no  foot  of  terri- 
tory outside  Europe.  Thirty  years  later  she  had  more  than  a 
million  square  miles  —  located  in  East  Africa,  Southwest  Africa, 
Central  Africa,  in  China  about  the  city  of  Kiau  Chow  in  the 
Shantung  peninsula,  and  in  many  rich  islands  in  the  Pacific. 
These  non-European  possessions  contained  in  1910  some  14 
million  inhabitants  (besides  over  40  millions  more  in  districts 
like  Shantung,  which  were  recognized  as  German  "  spheres 
of  influence  ") ;  but  only  some  20,000  of  all  these  were  whites. 
And  Germany  proved  herself  absolutely  unfit  to  rule  subject 
races,  turning  them  into  slaves,  to  secure  ivory,  rubber,  and 
copra,  and  putting  down  native  risings  with  medieval  cruelty 
reinforced  by  modern  efficiency. 

2.  Kaiser   Wilhelm    II    adopted   another   new   policy.     He  Growth  of 
determined  to  make  Germany  a  great  naval  power.     He  en-  nav^po^er 
larged  and  fortified  the  Kiel  Canal,  near  the  base  of  the  Danish 
peninsula,  from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Baltic,  so  that  his  navy 

might  have  perfect  protection  and  so  that  it  might  instantly 
concentrate  in  either  sea.  And  year  by  year,  against  the  violent 
resistance  of  the  Socialists  in  the  Reichstag,  he  forced  through 
huge  appropriations  to  construct  more  superdreadnaughts. 

The  pretext  for  this  naval  policy  was  the  need  to  protect  the 
new  trade  and  new  colonies.  The  real  motive,  often  frankly 
confessed,  was,  at  the  first  chance,  to  destroy  England  and 
weaken  the  United  States.  Indeed  the  Kaiser  and  his  advisers 
said  openly  that,  had  their  fleet  been  ready,  they  would  have 
attacked  the  United  States  during  our  Spanish  War,  to  destroy 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  with  its  check  upon  German  plans  in  South 
America  (cf.  West's  American  People,  §§  762,  771).  In  1902 
Germany  had  a  difficulty  with  Venezuela,   and  showed  plain 


8         THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

intention  to  seize  at  least  a  port  there.  President  Roosevelt 
sent  the  American  fleet,  under  Dewey,  into  Venezuelan  waters 
and  gave  the  Germans  forty-eight  hours  to  withdraw.  His 
somewhat  peremptory  method  was  successful.  But  from  that 
time,  we  are  told,1  German  naval  officers  were  keenly  interested 
in  New  York's  military  defenses. 

Germany  Some  survey  like  the  foregoing  is  needful  to  guard  us  against 

an  ng  an  ^e  „  tvrannv  0f  names."  England  and  Germany  in  1914  were 
both  "  constitutional  monarchies  "  ;  but  that  does  not  mean 
that  they  were  in  any  way  alike,  in  government  or  society.  Eng- 
land had  a  democratic  government,  in  which  the  monarchic  and 
aristocratic  survivals  were  practically  powerless  —  mere  matters 
of  form :  the  German  Empire  was  practically  an  absolutism. 
England's  ideals  were  based  upon  industry  and  world-peace : 
Germany's  ideals  were  based  upon  militarism  and  conquest. 
Englishmen  thought  of  the  "  state  "  as  a  condition  for  the  full 
development  of  the  individual  man :  Germans  thought  of 
individual  men  as  existing  primarily  for  the  sake  of  the  ab- 
solutist state.  German  capitalism  was  perhaps  in  itself  no 
more  grasping  and  greedy  than  like  forces  in  other  countries. 
But  in  England,  America,  or  France,  those  forces  must  cease 
to  work  evil  whenever  the  majority  of  the  people  are  wise  enough 
and  good  enough  to  will  it  so  —  and  vote  so  :  in  Germany  that 
capitalistic  greed  was  backed  by  an  irresistible  military  despotism 
against  which  the  masses  were  powerless,  either  by  ballots  or 
bullets. 

For  Further  Readings. —  References  on  the  spirit  of  German 
autocracy  are  given  at  the  close  of  chapter  iv.  On  the  imperial 
German  government,  details  are  given  in  West's  Modern  World, 
pp.  654-661. 


1  Davis,  Roots  of  the  War,  360. 


CHAPTER   II 

MAKING    "ALLIANCES"    FOR   PEACE 

By  1900,  Europe  had  fallen  into  two  hostile  camps,  the  Triple 
Alliance  and  the  Triple  Entente. 

1.  Before  Bismarck  fell  from  power,  he  had  built  the  Triple  The  Triple 
Alliance.  After  1871  he  sought  to  isolate  France,  so  as  to  keep  ^i&nce 
her  from  finding  any  ally  in  a  possible  "  war  of  revenge."  To 
this  end  he  cultivated  friendship  with  all  other  European  powers, 
but  especially  with  Russia  and  Austria.  Austria  he  had  beaten 
in  war  only  a  few  years  earlier  (1866) ;  but  he  had  treated  her 
with  marked  gentleness  in  the  peace  treaty,  and  the  ruling 
German  element  in  Austria  was  quite  ready  now  to  find  backing 
in  the  powerful  and  successful  German  Empire. 

Soon,  however,  Bismarck  found  that  he  must  choose  between   Bismarck 

Austria  and  Russia.     These  two  were  bitter  rivals  for  control  ?reff5s  , 

Austria  to 

in  the  Balkans.  The  Slav  peoples  there,  recently  freed  from  Russia 
the  Turks,  looked  naturally  to  Russia,  who  had  won  their 
freedom  for  them,  as  the  "  Big  Brother  "  of  all  Slavs  and  all 
Greek  religionists.  But  Austria,  shut  out  now  from  control 
in  Central  Europe,  was  bent  upon  aggrandizement  to  the  South. 
In  particular  her  statesmen  meant  to  win  a  strip  of  territory 
through  to  Salonika,  on  the  Aegean,  so  that,  with  a  railroad 
thither,  they  might  control  the  rich  Aegean  trade.  If  Serbia 
were  able  to  fulfill  her  dream  of  a  South  Slav  state  reaching  to 
the  Adriatic,  she  would  interpose  an  inseparable  Slav  barrier 
to  this  plan,  right  across  the  path  of  Austria's  ambition.  Ac- 
cordingly Austria  sought  always  to  keep  Serbia  weak  and  small ; 
while  Russia,  hating  Austria  even  more  than  she  loved  the 
Balkan  Slavs,  backed  Serbia. 

9 


10 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


Italy  drawn 
into  Bis- 
marck's 
league 


The  Dual 
Alliance  of 
1884 


England's 
"  splendid 
isolation  " 


This  rivalry  between  Austria  and  Russia  became  so  acute 
by  1879  that  there  was  always  danger  of  war;  and  in  that 
year  Bismarck  chose  to  side  with  Austria  as  the  surer  ally. 
Accordingly  he  formed  a  definite  written  alliance  with  Austria 
to  the  effect  that  Germany  would  help  Austria  in  case  of  war 
with  Russia,  and  Austria  would  help  Germany  in  case  she  were 
attacked  by  France  and  any  other  Power. 

Three  years  later,  Bismarck  drew  Italy  into  the  league, 
making  it  the  Triple  Alliance.  Italy  was  so  bitterly  enraged  at 
the  French  seizure  of  Tunis  in  that  year,  in  flat  disregard  of 
Italian  imperialistic  ambitions  there,  that  she  laid  aside  her 
ancient  differences  with  Austria  for  a  time  and  agreed  to  aid 
the  central  empires  in  any  war  in  which  they  should  be  attacked 
by  two  or  more  powers  —  in  return  for  backing  in  her  colonial 
ambitions. 

2.  Then  Russia  and  France,  each  isolated  in  Europe,  drew 
together  for  mutual  protection  into  a  "  Dual  Alliance  "  (1884). 
But  Bismarck  hoped  to  draw  England  into  his  "  triple " 
league ;  and  his  hope  was  not  unreasonable.  In  the  eighties 
and  nineties,  England  and  France  were  bitter  rivals  in  Africa, 
and  England  and  Russia,  in  Asia.  England,  however,  clung 
to  a  proud  policy  of  "  splendid  isolation."  Then,  after  Bis- 
marck's fall,  she  began  to  see  in  the  German  Emperor's  colonial 
ambitions  a  more  threatening  rival  than  France ;  and  Russia's 
defeat  by  Japan  made  Russia  less  dangerous.  German  mili- 
tarism was  deeply  hateful  to  English  democracy,  and  Germany's 
new  commercial  activity  threatened  England's  trade,  while  the 
new  navy  that  the  Kaiser  was  building  could  be  meant  only  to 
work  England's  destruction.  Moreover,  England  and  France 
were  daily  coming  to  a  better  understanding,  and  in  1903  a 
sweeping  arbitration  treaty  put  any  war  between  them  almost 
out  of  the  question.  Soon  afterward,  England  and  Russia 
succeeded  in  agreeing  upon  a  line  in  Persia  which  should  sepa- 
rate the  "influence"  of  one  power  in  that  country  from  the  "  in- 
fluence "  of  the  other,  so  removing  all  immediate  prospect  of 
trouble  between  the  two  (1910). 


"ALLIANCES"   FOR  PEACE  11 

From  this  time  the  Dual  Alliance  became  the  Triple  Entente   The  Triple 
—  England,  France,  and  Russia.     England  was  not  bound  by   Entente 
definite  treaty  to  give  either  country  aid  in  war;     but  it  was 
plain  that  France  and  Russia  were  her  friends,  and  that  she 
could   not    look    on   quietly  and   see   her  friends   crushed   by 
Germany  —  which  was  showing  marked  hostility  to  her. 

Each  of  the  two  huge  armed  leagues  always  protested  that  The  al- 
its  aim  was  peace.  No  doubt  many  men  in  both  —  and  nearly  liances  and 
all  in  one  —  did  shrink  from  precipitating  a  conflict  between 
such  enormous  forces  under  the  new  conditions  of  army  or- 
ganization, quick  transportation,  and  deadly  explosives.  For 
half  a  century  (1871-1914),  except  for  the  minor  struggles  in 
the  half-savage  Balkans,  Europe  rested  in  an  "  armed  peace." 

But  this  "  peace  "  was  based  upon  fear,  and  it  was  costly.   Mild  efforts 

Year  by  vear,  each  alliance  strove  to  make  its  armies  and  navies   for  world 

peace 
mightier  than  the  other's.  Huge  and  huger  cannon  were  in- 
vented, only  to  be  cast  into  the  scrap  heap  for  still  huger  ones. 
A  dreadnaught  costing  millions  was  scrapped  in  a  few  months 
by  some  costlier  design.  The  burden  upon  the  workers  and 
the  evil  moral  influences  of  such  armaments  were  only  less 
than  the  burden  and  evil  of  war.  In  every  land  voices  began 
to  cry  out  that  it  was  all  needless :  that  the  world  was  too 
Christian  and  too  wise  ever  again  to  let  itself  be  desolated  by  a 
great  war.  And  then  came  some  interesting  efforts  to  find  new 
machinery  by  which  to  guard  against  war  —  in  standing  arbi- 
tration treaties,  permanent  international  tribunals  like  the 
Hague  Court,  and  occasional  World  Congresses. 

Too  soon,  however,  it  was  made  plain,  that,  noble  as  these  Germany 

efforts  were,  they  were  insufficient,  in  the  absence  of  a  more   defeats 

proposals 
organized  world  opinion  and  organized  world  force  and  of  radical  for  disarma- 

measures  of  disarmament.     And  at  the  Hague  Congresses  in   ment 

1899  and  in  1907,  the  earnest  proposals  for  disarmament  made 

by  England  and  the  United  States  failed  of  result  because  of 

the   implacable   opposition   of   Germany   and   Austria.     It   is 

significant,  too,  that  Germany  repeatedly  refused  to  enter  into 

standing  arbitration  treaties  with  the  United  States,  though 


12        THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

such  treaties  had  been  concluded  between  us  and  every  other 
important  country. 
Army  in-  The  year  1913,  after  some  local  wars  in  the  Balkans,  saw  a 

Europe  in       new  outburst  of  militarism.     Germany  adopted  a  new  army 
1913  bill  planning  an  increase  of  the  army  in  peace  from  650,000  to 

870,000,  with  an  immense  money  appropriation.1  Three  weeks 
later  (July  20),  France,  in  terror,  raised  her  term  of  active 
service  from  two  years  to  three,  adding  fifty  per  cent  to  her 
forces  under  arms.  Austria  and  Russia  adopted  plans  for 
similar  reorganization  of  their  armies.  Even  little  Belgium, 
alarmed  at  the  building  of  German  railways  to  her  border  —  at 
vast  expense  and  with  no  apparent  purpose  except  for  invasion 
—  adopted  universal  military  service.  Each  country  of  course 
found  excuse  and  incitement  to  further  efforts  in  the  like 
efforts  by  its  rivals.  In  particular,  German  and  Austrian 
papers  published  frenzied  articles  on  the  danger  with  which 
their  countries  were  threatened  by  the  proposed  enormous  in- 
crease of  Russia's  army  and  by  new  Russian  railways  that  ap- 
parently looked  to  an  invasion  of  Germany,  just  as  German 
roads  looked  to  an  invasion  of  Belgium  and  France.  The 
"  balance  "  of  power  was  a  matter  of  unstable  equilibrium.  A 
touch  would  tip  it  into  universal  war. 

Within  a  year  that  war  was  precipitated  by  a  trivial  event  in 
the  Balkans. 


1  The  Socialists  in  the  Reichstag  voted  against  the  army  bill,  but  im- 
mediately afterward  most  of  them  voted  for  the  appropriation.  This  in- 
consistency has  a  partial  explanation  not  wholly  to  their  discredit.  The  new 
taxes,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  Empire,  bore  heavily  upon  large 
incomes  and  upon  the  landlords.  The  Socialists  had  long  advocated  this 
sort  of  taxation  in  vain. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE   BALKANS:    THE   SEED    GROUND    OP   WAR 


A  century  ago,  all  southeast   Europe,  beyond  Austria  and   The  Balkan 
Russia,  was  part  of  Turkey.     But  the  Turks  were  mere  in-  races 
vaders.     They  were  rulers,  but  not  numerous  in  Europe  except 
near  Constantinople,  and  they  had  no  part  in  European  civiliza- 
tion. 

In  no  other  part  of  the  earth  of  so  small  extent  was  there   The  Greeks 
such  a  mingling  of  distinct   peoples  —  even   apart  from  the 
Turkish  conquest.     The  land  is  puckered  and  crumpled   into 
a  quaint  network  of  interlacing  mountains  and  valleys ;    and 
the  inhabitants  themselves  were  almost  as  much  intermixed. 

Besides  the  ruling  Turk  there  were  five  distinct  subject  races.  Roumanians 
In  the  old  Hellenic  peninsula  dwelt  the  Greeks,  with  the  mem- 
ories of  their  ancient  greatness.  Xorth  of  the  Danube  lay  the 
Roumanians,  proud  of  their  legendary  descent  from  Roman 
colonists  in  Dacia.  Their  language  to-day  is  closer  to  the  old 
Latin  than  is  any  other  living  European  language,  although  in 
blood  the  people  are  no  doubt  now  mainly  Slav.  Only  half 
their  race  lived  in  "  Roumania."  One  fourth  dwelt  in  Bessa- 
rabia, which  Russia  had  seized  from  the  Turks  in  1812 ;  and 
another  fourth  were  in  Transylvania,  which  Hungary  had  held 
ever  since  she  conquered  it  from  the  Turks  in  the  eighteenth 
century. 

Between  these  Greek  and  "  Roman  "  peoples  lay  the  Bul- 
garians, the  Serbs,  and  along  the  Adriatic  just  north  of  Greece, 
the  Albanians.  These  last  were  wild  herdsmen,  descendants  Albanians 
of  the  ancient  Illyrians.  For  the  most  part  they  had  adopted 
Mohammedanism  and  they  willingly  supplied  excellent  troops 
for  the  Turkish  army ;    but  in  other  respects  their  poverty  and 

13 


14 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


The  Serbs 
and  their 
divisions 


Monte- 
negrins 


The  Bul- 
garians 


their  mountains  made  it  possible  for  them  to  keep  a  rude  sort 
of  self-rule,  without  much  interference  from  Constantinople. 
Serbs  and  Bulgars  need  a  longer  explanation. 

The  Serbs  were  the  leading  survivors  of  the  conquering  South 
Slavs  who  settled  in  the  Balkan  regions  in  the  sixth  century. 
They  have  long  been  imbued  with  a  natural  ambition  to  restore 
their  ancient  empire  as  it  stood  when  the  Turk  overthrew  it  in 
the  fatal  battle  of  Kossova  (1389).  But  even  more  than  the 
Roumanians,  the  South  Slavs  had  been  broken  up  by  accidents 
of  war.  The  northwestern  part,  the  Bosnians,  had  remained 
independent  longer  than  Serbia  proper ;  and  then,  when  they 
were  conquered,  their  nobles  became  Mohammedans,  to  secure 
Turkish  favor,  though  the  peasants  remained  Greek  Christians 
—  like  most  of  the  subject  peoples  outside  Albania.  Other 
northern  parts  of  Serbia,  lands  of  the  Croats  and  Slovenes, 
were  reconquered  from  Turkey  by  Hungary  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  so  were  no  longer  part  of  the  home  land,  to  which 
by  race  and  language  they  belonged.  Moreover,  in  the  fast- 
nesses of  Montenegro  ("  Black  Mountain  ")  dwelt  some  200,000 
half-savage  Serbs  who  had  never  yielded  to  the  Turks  but  had 
kept  their  freedom  at  the  cost  of  "  five  hundred  years  of 
ferocious  heroism."  In  Serbia  itself,  the  Turks  had  for  the 
most  part  killed  off  the  nobles.  The  village  life  was  left,  how- 
ever, much  as  it  had  been  of  old.  The  people  managed  their 
local  matters  in  small  democracies,  and  earned  their  living  as 
farmers  and  herdsmen  of  droves  of  pigs  —  for  which,  however, 
they  had  no  proper  sale  after  Austrian  jealousy  shut  them  from 
her  markets.  As  in  all  Christian  lands  ruled  by  the  Turk, 
oppression  and  cruelty  dwarfed  their  civilization. 

East  of  Serbia,  beyond  a  dividing  mountain  range,  lay  the 
Bulgarians.  The  "  Bulgars  "  came  into  the  peninsula  as 
conquerors  from  central  Asia  some  two  centuries  later  than  the 
Slav  Serbs.  Originally  they  were  baggy-trousered  Asiatic 
nomads,  akin  to  Tartars  and  Turks,  and  to-day  they  have  in- 
tense pride  in  that  ancient  history  as  a  race  of  conquerors. 
But  in  blood  they  have  'been  so  absorbed  by  the  Slavs  among 


THE   BALKANS  15 

whom  they  settled  that  there  is  little  real  difference  in  race  be- 
tween them  and  Roumanian  on  the  one  side  or  Serb  on  the 
other. 

Still  a  long  history  of  rivalry,  warfare,  and  mutual  cruelty  Race  ha- 
has  left  an  intense  "  race  "  hatred  between  Bulgars,  Serbs,  dairies 
and  Greeks ;  and  this  hatred  has  been  made  hotter  by  the  fact 
that  each  one  of  the  three  has  hoped  to  win  for  itself  the 
northern  Aegean  coast,  as  the  Turkish  power  has  decayed. 
Turkish  misrule  has  still  further  confused  this  perplexing 
picture.  During  her  centuries  of  control,  to  keep  Bulgarians 
and  Serbs,  either  one,  from  rising  unitedly  against  her,  Turkey 
has  transplanted  whole  groups  of  Bulgarian  villages  into  Serbia, 
quite  in  the  fashion  of  ancient  Oriental  despotisms,  replacing 
them  with  villages  of  transplanted  Serbs  —  so  that  each  sub- 
ject race  should  always  have  enemies  in  its  midst. 

This  is  a  proper  place  to  survey  the  distinctive  marks  of 
the  four  great  divisions  of  European  Slavs  :  (I)  the  Russians, 
influenced  by  long  Tartar  domination  in  the  middle  ages,  by 
admixture  with  various  border  peoples,  and  by  the  Greek 
Church;  (2)  the  Poles,  set  off  from  the  Russians  by  the 
adoption  of  Latin  Christianity  and  by  German  instead  of 
Tartar  influence  ;  (3)  the  Bohemian  and  neighboring  Slavic 
peoples  now  known  as  Czecho-Slovaks,  resembling  the  Poles 
in  their  history  but  dominated  in  recent  centuries  by  Aus- 
trian Germans ;  and  (4)  these  South  Slavs  of  the  Balkans, 
with  a  promising  Greek  influence  in  the  early  middle  ages, 
followed  by  a  long  and  crushing  subjection  to  the  Turk 
which  has  lasted  in  part  to  our  day. 

It  is  impossible  to  tell  here  the  long  agony  of  the  century  The  subject 
struggle  by  which  the  subject  Balkan  peoples  finally  threw  off  \*™l™ 
the  Turkish  yoke,  but  some  parts  of  the  story  are  necessary. 
The  first  successful  revolt  was  the  Greek  rising  in  1821-1828. 
The  intervention  of  England,  Russia,  and  France  compelled 
Turkey  to  grant  Greek  independence ;  and  at  the  same  time 
Roumania  and  Serbia  advanced  to  the  position  of  merely  tribu- 


16 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


"  Bulgarian 
Atrocities  " 
of  1876 


Russia's  at- 
tempt to 
free  the 
Balkans 


Interference 
by  the  Con- 
gress of 
Berlin,  1878 


tary  states,  dependent  upon  Turkey  but  ruled  by  their  own 
princes. 

The  Crimean  War  (1850),  in  which  France  and  England 
attacked  Russia,  bolstered  up  the  tottering  Ottoman  Empire 
for  a  time,  but  a  great  collapse  came  twenty  years  later.  The 
Sultan  had  promised  many  reforms  for  his  Christian  subjects, 
but  these  promises  bore  no  fruit ;  and  in  1875-1876,  the  Serbs 
in  Bosnia  and  the  Bulgarians  rose  for  independence.  There 
followed  the  horrible  events  long  known  as  the  "  Bulgarian 
Atrocities."  Turkish  soldiers  destroyed  a  hundred  Bulgarian 
villages  with  every  form  of  devilish  torture  imaginable,  and  mas- 
sacred 30,000  people,  carrying  off  also  thousands  of  Christian 
girls  into  terrible  slavery. 

Then  Serbia  sprang  to  arms ;  and  Tsar  Alexander  II  of 
Russia  declared  war  on  Turkey  (1877)  —  in  full  accord  with  the 
demand  of  his  people.  The  universal  horror  in  Western  Europe 
at  the  crimes  of  the  Turk  prevented  for  a  time  any  interfer- 
ence ;  and  in  ten  months  the  Russian  armies  held  the  Turks  at 
their  mercy.  The  Peace  of  San  Stefano  (1878)  arranged  for  a 
group  of  free  Slav  states  in  the  peninsula  and  for  the  exclusion 
of  Turkey  from  Europe  except  for  the  city  of  Constantinople. 

Alexander  would  probably  have  kept  on  to  secure  Con- 
stantinople, had  he  not  seen  a  growing  danger  of  European 
interference.  And  even  now  Europe  did  intervene.  Austria 
wanted  a  share  of  Balkan  plunder  ;  England  feared  the  advance 
of  Russia  toward  her  communications  with  India ;  and  so  the 
Peace  of  San  Stefano  was  torn  up.  The  Congress  of  Berlin  (1878), 
dominated  by  Disraeli,  the  English  Conservative,  restored  half 
the  freed  Christian  populations  to  their  old  slavery  under  the 
Turk;  handed  over  Bosnia  to  Austria  to  "administer"  for 
Turkey,  with  a  solemn  provision  that  Austria  should  never 
annex  the  territory  to  her  own  realms ;  and  left  the  whole 
Balkan  district  for  the  next  third  of  a  century  in  its  old 
anarchy,  with  only  slight  gains  for  Serbia  and  Bulgaria.  In 
fixing  responsibility  for  the  World  War  of  1914,  this  crime  of 
1878  cannot  be  wholly  overlooked. 


THE   BALKANS  17 

It  is  only  fair  to  note  that  while  the  English  government   Germany 
under  Disraeli  was  chiefly  responsible  for  that  crime,  the  Eng-  succeeds  to 
lish  people  promptly  repudiated  it  at  the  polls.     Gladstone  came  place  as  the 
forth  from  retirement  to  stump  England  against  the  "  shameful  I1  e° 
alliance  with  Abdul  the  Assassin  "  ;    and  at  the  next  elections 
(1880),  Disraeli  was  overthrown  by  Gladstone  with  huge  ma- 
jorities.    The  wrong  to  the  Balkans  could  not  then  be  undone,1 
but  from  this  time  England  drew  away  from  her  old  policy  of 
courting  Turkish  friendship  —  wherein  her  place  was  quickly 
taken  by  Germany. 

No   part   of   her  non-European   empire   interested    German  In  order  to 

ambition  so  deeply  as  her  advance  into  Asia  Minor.     This  be-  ™in  contro1 
r  *>  in  Asia 

gan  in  earnest  about  1900.  Germany  did  not  acquire  actual  Minor 
title  to  territory  there  ;  but  she  did  secure  from  Turkey  various 
rich  "  concessions,"  guaranteeing  her  for  long  periods  the  sole 
right  to  build  and  operate  great  railroads  and  to  develop  valuable 
mining  and  oil  properties.  This  "  economic  penetration  "  she 
expected  confidently  to  turn  into  political  sovereignty. 

To  secure  such  concessions,  Germany  had  sought  the  Turk's 
favor  in  shameful  ways.  She  loaned  to  the  Sultan  German 
officers  to  reorganize  and  drill  the  Turkish  armies,  and  sup- 
plied them  with  the  most  modern  arms  to  keep  down  the  rising 
Christian  natives  under  his  yoke  —  as  in  the  Turkish  war  with 
Greece  for  Crete  in  1897.  And  in  1895  when  new  Armenian 
massacres  had  roused  England  so  that  great  public  meetings 
were  calling  for  war  upon  Turkey,  Kaiser  Wilhelm  sent  to  the 
Sultan  his  photograph  and  that  of  his  wife,  to  show  German 
friendship  and  support.  Germany  knew  that  if  she  could  keep 
this  position  of  defender  of  the  tottering  Ottoman  Empire,  she 
could  before  long  make  that  Empire  into  a  vassal  state. 

The  prospect  of  German  dominance  in  Asia  Minor  brought  Germany 

Germany  and  Austria  into  closer  sympathy  in  their  Balkan  3i?inLin. 

policies.     Austria's    interference    in    those    regions    had    been  policy 

purely  bad.     She  aimed  to  keep  the  little  Balkan  states  weak  a^f*"st  . 
r         J  m  ^  a     Greater 

and  mutually  hostile  to  one  another,  and  especially  to  prevent  Serbia  " 
the  growth  of  a  "  Greater  Serbia,"  which  might  attract  to  itself 


18 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


The 

"  Mittel- 
Europa  " 
dream 


Austria  an- 
nexes 
Bosnia 


Austria's  dissatisfied  Slav  subjects.  Now  (1898,  1899),  Ger- 
many obtained  concessions  from  Turkey  for  a  railway  from 
"  Berlin  to  Bagdad,"  to  open  up  the  fabulously  rich  Oriental 
trade.  A  powerful  Serbia,  through  which  that  line  must  pass, 
might  have  checked  that  project.  Thenceforward  Germany 
was  ready  to  back  Austria  unreservedly  in  Balkan  aggression, 
or  to  use  her  as  a  cat's  paw  there.  And  in  return  for  support 
in  the  Balkans,  Austria  permitted  herself  to  sink  virtually  into 
a  vassal  state  of  Germany,  following  blindly  her  lead  in  all 
other  foreign  relations. 

Such  was  the  origin  of  the  German  dream  of  a  "  Mittel- 
Europa  "  empire,  reaching  across  Europe  from  the  North  Sea 
to  the  Aegean  and  the  Black  Seas,  and  on  through  Asia  Minor 
to  the  Euphrates.  This  meant  German  leadership  over  Austria 
and  Turkey  and  some  sort  of  control  by  some  of  these  states 
over  the  Balkans.  If  this  dream  could  be  established  upon  a 
solid  basis  —  and  it  very  nearly  was  done  —  there  would  be 
created  a  supreme  world  power,  before  which  states  like  France 
would  sink  into  utter  insignificance. 

In  1908  came  a  step  toward  fulfilling  the  plan.  Taking  ad- 
vantage of  internal  dissensions  in  Turkey,  Austria  formally 
annexed  Bosnia,  in  flat  contradiction  to  her  solemn  pledges. 
This  was  not  only  a  brutal  stroke  at  the  sanctity  of  treaties, 
but  also  it  seemed  a  fatal  blow  to  any  hope  for  a  reunion  of  that 
Slav  district  with  Serbia.  Serbia  protested  earnestly,  and  was 
supported  by  Russia.  But  the  Kaiser  "  took  his  stand  in  shin- 
ing armor  by  the  side  of  his  ally,"  as  he  himself  put  it;  and 
Russia,  still  weak  from  her  defeat  by  Japan  and  from  her  revo- 
lution of  1906,  had  to  back  down.  Serbia  was  then  forced  by 
Austria's  rough  threats  to  make  humiliating  apologies.  It  is 
not  strange  that  secret  societies  at  once  grew  up  in  Serbia 
pledged  to  hostility  to  the  "  odious  and  greedy  northern  neighbor 
who  holds  millions  of  Serb  brothers  in  chains." 

Then  came  two  events  less  favorable  to  the  Teutonic  designs. 

1.  The  first  came  from  Italy.  That  state  was  eager  to  use 
the  army  and  navy  it  had  been  maintaining  at  crushing  cost, 


THE  BALKANS  19 

and  it  had  long  seen  its  ambitions  for  colonial  empire  balked.   The  Italian 
In  1911,  seeking  excuse  in  the  ill  treatment  of   some  Italian   Turkey 
traders  in  Tripoli,  Italy  declared  war  on  Turkey  and  wrested  1911 
from   her   that  African  province   along  with   various   Aegean 
islands.     This  act  followed  so  closely  the  precedents  by  which 
France  and  Germany  had  been  building  up  colonial  empires 
that  "  Europe  "  was  constrained  to  permit  the  deed  with  only 
mild  protests.     Italy's  easy  success  inflamed  her  imperialists, 
however,  into  putting  forward  programs  for  further  expansion 
in  the  Aegean,  in  Asia  Minor,  and  especially  in  Albania  just 
across  the  Adriatic ;    and  all  of  these  designs  were  exceedingly 
distasteful  to  her  two  allies  in  the  Triple  Alliance. 

2.  And  Italy's  victory  encouraged  another  attack  upon  The  Balkan 
Turkey.  United  action  by  the  mutually  hostile  Balkan  states  ar  ° 
had  seemed  impossible.  But  in  1912,  Bulgaria,  Serbia,  Mon- 
tenegro, and  Greece  suddenly  joined  in  a  war  to  drive  the  Turk 
out  of  Europe  —  and  to  divide  his  possessions  there  among 
themselves.  Serbia  was  to  have  northern  Albania,  with  its 
seaports  ;  Montenegro,  the  port  of  Scutari ;  Greece,  southern 
Albania  and  a  small  strip  of  Macedonian  coast ;  and  Bulgaria 
the  bulk  of  Macedonia. 

The  allies  won  swift  victories  and  in  a  few  months  were  almost 
at  the  gates  of  Constantinople.  "  Europe "  intervened  to 
arrange  the  peace  terms.  Italy,  like  Austria,  was  hostile  to  a 
Greater  Serbia;  and  at  the  insistence  of  these  powers  backed 
by  Germany,  a  new  Kingdom  of  Albania  was  created,  shutting 
off  Serbia  once  more  from  the  sea  she  had  reached,  while  Mon- 
tenegro was  forced,  by  threat  of  war,  to  give  up  to  Albania 
Scutari,  which  she  had  conquered.  Turkey  was  to  surrender, 
mostly  to  Bulgaria,  her  remaining  territory  in  Europe  except 
for  Constantinople.  Germany  had  carried  her  points  in  this 
settlement ;  but  her  ally,  Turkey,  had  collapsed,  and  events 
were  at  once  to  show  that  in  siding  with  Bulgaria  she  had  "  put 
her  money  on  the  wrong  horse." 

The  treaty  left  Bulgaria  almost  the  only  gainer.  The  cheated 
allies  demanded  that  she  now  share  her  gains  with  them.     She 


20 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  XEW  AGE 


1913 


The  Second  refused ;  and  at  once  (June,  1913)  followed  "  the  Second  Balkan 
iqi*an     ar'   War."     Greece,  Serbia,  Montenegro,  and  Roumania  attacked 
Bulgaria.     The  Turks  seized  the  chance  to  reoccupy  Adrianople, 
and   were   permitted    to   keep   it.     In    a  month  Bulgaria  was 
crushed,  and  a  new  division  of  booty  was  arranged.     Greece 


The  Balkans 
in  1913 


1912 


1913 


The  Balkan  States. 


won  the  richest  prize,  including  the  city  of  Saloniki ;    but  each 
of  the  other  allies  secured  gains  in  the  "  -July  War." 

This  contest  left  Roumania  the  largest  Balkan  state,  with 
about  seven  and  a  half  million  people.  Then  came  Serbia, 
Greece,  and  Bulgaria,  each  with  about  four  and  a  half  million. 
Montenegro  had  risen  to  nearly  a  half  million.  Albania  counted 
800,000;  and  remaining  "Turkey  in  Europe,"  nearly  two 
million.  All  these  nations  have  a  frightful  amount  of  il- 
literacy, and  none  has  much  wealth.  All  had  a  legislature 
elected  by  manhood  suffrage,  and  Greece  and  Roumania  had 


THE   BALKANS  21 

considerable  real  political  freedom.  In  the  other  lands,  the 
monarchs  were  almost  absolute. 

The  Balkan  nations  came  out  of  the  two  wars  not  only 
terribly  exhausted,  but  hating  one  another  with  ferocious  in- 
tensity. Especially  did  Bulgar  now  hate  Serb  and  Greek ; 
and  each  side,  with  too  much  truth,  accused  the  other  of  wanton 
butcheries  and  outrages  during  the  war  quite  as  bad  as  had  ever 
been  suffered  from  the  Turk.  Serbia,  too,  was  still  cheated  of 
her  proper  desire  for  an  outlet  on  the  Adriatic  —  her  only 
natural  gateway  to  the  outside  world  —  and  she  resented  fiercely 
the  Austrian  and  Italian  policy  which  had  so  balked  her.  More 
openly  than  ever  before,  in  the  months  that  followed,  enthusi- 
astic Serb  patriots  talked  of  recovering  from  Austria  the  Slav 
provinces  of  Dalmatia,  Croatia,  and  Bosnia,  for  a  South  Slav 
state  ;  and  this  talk  was  encouraged  by  hope  of  Russian  aid,  — 
a  hope  long  fostered  by  secret  Russian  intrigue. 

To  this  pass  the  unhappy  Balkan  lands  had  been  brought 
by  the  evil-starred  Congress  of  Berlin,  thirty-five  years  before, 
and  by  the  greed  and  rivalries  of  the  Great  Powers  since  that 
time.  The  Balkans  had  been  made  a  seed  ground  for  war,  and 
in  many  ways  the  wars  of  1912-1913  prepared  the  occasion  for 
the  world  struggle  that  began  in  the  next  year.  Austria  felt 
deeply  humiliated  by  the  outcome  of  the  Second  Balkan  War, 
and  was  planning  to  redress  her  loss  of  prestige  by  striking 
Serbia  savagely  on  the  first  occasion.  Prince  Lichnowsky,  Ger- 
man ambassador  at  London,  tells  us  now  that  only  England's 
honest  desire  for  peace,  and  her  coaxing  Montenegro  and  Serbia 
into  submission  in  1913  at  the  close  of  the  First  Balkan  War, 
prevented  a  world  war  then.  A  year  later,  England's  efforts 
to  a  like  end  failed. 


CHAPTER  IV 


GERMANY   WILLS   THE  WAR 


German 
war  propa- 
ganda at 
home 


The  occasion  of  the  war,  it  has  just  been  said,  was  found  in 
the  Balkan  situation ;  but  for  the  cause  we  must  turn  back 
to  Germany.  For  nearly  half  a  century  that  country  had  been 
ruled  by  a  Prussian  despotism  resting  upon  a  bigoted,  arrogant 
oligarchy  of  birth,  and  a  greedy,  scheming  oligarchy  of  money. 
That  rule  had  conferred  on  Germany  many  benefits.  It  had 
cared  for  the  people  as  zealously  as  the  herdsman  cares  for  the 
flocks  he  expects  to  shear.  But  in  doing  so  it  had  amazingly 
transformed  the  old  peace-loving,  gentle  German  people. 

It  had  taught  that  docile  race  (1)  to  bow  to  Authority,  rather 
than  to  Right ; 1  (2)  to  believe  Germany  stronger,  wiser,  better 
than  "  decaying  "  England,  "  decadent  and  licentious  "  France, 
"  uncouth  and  anarchic  "  Russia,  or  "  money-serving  "  America ; 
(3)  to  be  ready  to  accept  a  program,  at  the  word  of  command, 
for  imposing  German  Kultur  upon  the  rest  of  the  world  by 
force;  (4)  to  regard  war,  even  aggressive  war,  not  as  horrible 
and  sinful,  but  as  beautiful,  noble,  desirable,  and  right,  —  the 
final  measure  of  a  nation's  worth,  and  the  divinely  appointed 
means  for  saving  the  world  by  German  conquest ;  and  finally 
(5)  to  disregard  ordinary  morality,  national  or  individual,  when- 
ever it  might  interfere  with  the  victory  of  the  "  Fatherland." 

Insensibly  to  most  of  the  rest  of  the  world,  this  rabid  and 
diseased  patriotism  of  the  Germans  had  become  a  menace  to 
freedom  and  civilization.  It  was  the  strangest  doctrine  of 
national  pride  the  world  ever  heard.  There  were  not  wanting 
German  writers  to  claim  that  Joan  of  Arc,  Dante,  and  Jesus 


1  Observers  have  often  confounded  this  trait  "with  respect  for  law,"  — 
its  precise  opposite. 

22 


mouths 


GERMANY   WILLS   THE   WAR  23 

himself  owed  their  merits  to  German  blood  —  along  with  like 
astounding  assumptions  of  German  descent  to  explain  Voltaire, 
Alexander  the  Great,  and  Julius  Caesar.  Napoleon  even,  it  was 
urged  by  some  enthusiastic  German  patriots,  must  have  been 
descended  from  the  German  Vandals. 

The  viciousness  of  these  German  teachings  about  war  must 
be  shown  briefly  "  out  of  their  own  mouths  "  : 

"  War  is  the  noblest  and  holiest  expression  of  human  activity.  "  Out  of 
For  us,  too,  the  glad,  great  hour  of  battle  will  strike.  Still  and  deep  their  own 
in  the  German  heart  must  live  the  joy  of  battle  and  the  longing  for 
it.  Let  us  ridicule  to  the  utmost  the  old  women  in  breeches  who 
fear  war  and  deplore  it  as  cruel  and  revolting.  No ;  war  is  beautiful. 
Its  august  sublimity  elevates  the  human  heart  beyond  the  earthly 
and  the  common.  In  the  cloud  palace  above  sit  the  heroes  Frederick 
the  Great  and  Bliicher ;  and  all  the  men  of  action  —  the  great 
Emperor,  Moltke,  Roon,  Bismarck  —  are  there  as  well,  but  not 
the  old  women  who  would  take  away  our  joy  in  war.  .  .  .  That  is 
the  heaven  of  young  Germany."  —  Jung  Deutschland,  October,  1913 
(the  official  organ  of  the  "  Young  German  League,"  an  organization 
corresponding  in  a  way  to  our  Boy  Scouts). 

"  Germany's  mission  is  to  rejuvenate  exhausted  Europe  by  a 
diffusion  of  Germanic  blood."  —  School  and  Fatherland,  1913  (a 
school  manual). 

"  Our  fathers  have  left  us  much  to  do.  .  .  .  To-day  it  is  for  Ger- 
many to  arise  from  a  European  to  a  world  power.  .  .  .  Humani- 
tarian dreams  are  imbecility.  .  .  .  Right  and  wrong  are  notions 
indispensable  in  private  life.  The  German  people  are  always  right, 
because  they  number  87,000,000  souls."  —  Tannenberg,  Gross- 
Deutschland,  1913. 

"  We  are  the  salt  of  the  earth.  .  .  .  God  has  called  us  to 
civilize  the  world.  .  .  .  We  are  the  missionaries  of  human  prog- 
ress." —  Wilhelm  II,  speech  at  Bremen,  March  22,  1900. 

"  Even  in  the  distance,  and  on  the  farther  side  of  the  ocean,  with- 
out Germany  and  the  German  Emperor,  no  great  decision  dare 
henceforth  be  taken."  —  Wilhelm  II,  at  Kiel,  July  3,  1900. 

"  It  is  to  the  empire  of  the  world  that  the  German  genius  aspires." 

—  Wilhelm  II,  address,  June  20,  1902. 
"  The  world  owes  its  civilization  to  Germany  alone.  .  .  .     The 

time  is  near  when  the  earth  must  be  conquered  by  the  Germans." 

—  Wirth,  Weltmacht  in  der  Geschichte  (1901). 


24  THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

"  Ye  shall  love  peace  as  a  means  to  new  wars,  and  the  short  peace 
better  than  the  long.  .  .  .  You  say,  a  good  cause  hallows  even 
war  ;  but  I  tell  you,  a  good  war  hallows  every  cause."  —  Nietz- 
sche, Of  Wars  and  Warriors.  (Nietzsche  is  a  leader  of  German 
thought.) 

"  War  is  part  of  the  divinely  appointed  order.  .  .  .  War  is  both 
justifiable  and  moral,  and  the  idea  of  perpetual  peace  is  not  only 
impossible  but  also  immoral."  —  Treitschke,  Politics,  1916,  II, 
597,  599.  (Treitschke  for  many  years  had  been  a  leader  among 
German  historians.) 

"  We  must  strenuously  combat  the  peace  propaganda.  .  .  . 
War  is  a  political  necessity.  .  .  .  Without  war  there  could  be 
neither  racial  nor  cultural  progress. 

"  Might  is  the  supreme  right,  and  what  is  right  is  decided  by  war. 

"  It  is  presumptuous  to  think  a  weak  nation  is  to  have  the  same 
right  to  live  as  a  powerful  and  vigorous  nation. 

"  The  inevitableness  and  .  .  .  the  blessedness  of  war,  as  the  in- 
dispensable law  of  development,  must  be  repeatedly  emphasized." 
—  Bernhardi,  a  Prussian  general,  in  his  book,   The  Next  War,  in 
1912. 

"  It  is  only  by  trust  in  our  good  sword  that  we  shall  be  able  to 
maintain  that  place  in  the  sun  which  belongs  to  us,  and  which  the 
world  does  not  seem  very  willing  to  allow  us."  —  Crown  Prince,  in 
Deutschland  in  Waffen,  1913. 

"  Do  not  forget  the  civilizing  task  which  Providence  assigns  us. 
Just  as  Prussia  was  destined  to  be  the  nucleus  of  Germany,  so  the 
new  Germany  shall  be  the  nucleus  of  a  future  Empire  of  the 
West.  .  .  .  We  will  successively  annex  Denmark,  Holland,  Bel- 
gium, .  .  .  and  finally  northern  France.  .  .  .  No  coalition  in  the 
world  can  stop  us."  —  Schellendorf,  Prussian  War-Minister,  in 
1872. 

"  The  salvation  of  Germany  can  be  attained  only  by  the  annihila- 
tion of  the  smaller  states."  —  Treitschke,  Politics. 

And  so  on  almost  without  end.  Says  Guy  Stanton  Ford  in 
his  Foreword  to  Conquest  and  Kultur,1  a  notable  collection  of 
these  evil  teachings : 


1  A  volume  of  171  pages  that  should  be  in  every  school  library.  Issued 
by  the  United  States  Committee  on  Public  Information,  and  printed  at 
Washington  by  the  Government  Printing  Office. 


GERMANY   WILLS   THE   WAR  25 

"  It  is  a  motley  throng  who  are  here  heard  in  praise  of  war  and 
international  suspicion  and  conquest  and  intrigue  and  devastation 

—  emperors,  kings,  princes,  poets,  philosophers,  educators,  journal- 
ists, legislators,  manufacturers,  militarists,  statesmen.  Line  upon 
line,  precept  upon  precept,  they  have  written  this  ritual  of  envy 
and  broken  faith  and  rapine.  Before  them  is  the  war  god  to  whom 
they  have  offered  up  their  reason  and  their  humanity  ;  behind  them, 
the  misshapen  image  they  have  made  of  the  German  people,  leering 
with  bloodstained  visage  over  the  ruins  of  civilization." 

True,  in  other  lands,  even  in  America,  lonely  voices  are 
heard  speaking  this  same  doctrine  of  insolent  and  ruthless 
Might.  But  in  these  other  lands  any  such  occasional  voice  is 
smothered  at  once  by  storms  of  indignant  rebuke.  In  Ger- 
many, for  fifty  years,  this  war-worship  encountered  almost 
no  protest  —  except  a  feeble  one  from  the  Socialists.  True, 
again,  no  great  country not  England  or  France  or  America 

—  has  been  wholly  free  from  greed  for  territory  and  for  trade, 

—  just  such  greed  as  lies  at  the  root  of  most  wars.  But  in 
these  lands  the  time  is  past  when  public  opinion  will  support 
an  aggressive  war,  especially  with  a  civilized  people,  waged 
openly  and  avoivedly  to  satisfy  such  low  ambitions.  Meanwhile, 
Germany,  led  by  her  war-besotted  prophets,  had  been  zealously 
making  ready  for  just  such  wars  of  greed. 

No  one  must  think  that  this  teaching  was  mere  talk.  Said 
a  member  of  the  American  Embassy  in  Belgium :  "  They 
[the  Germans]  fight,  not  because  they  are  forced  to,  but  be- 
cause, curiously  enough,  they  believe  much  of  their  talk.  That 
is  one  of  the  dangers  of  the  Germans  to  which  the  world  is  ex- 
posed :  they  really  believe  much  of  what  they  say."  (Vernon 
Kellogg  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  August,  1917.) 

Ottfried  Nippold,  a  Liberal  professor  in  one  of  the  German  Testimony 
universities,  shocked  by  the  prevalence  of  this  evil  teaching,   German 
published  a  book  against  it  in  1913.     Said  he,  "  A  systematic  Liberal 
stimulation  of  the  war  spirit  is  going  on.  .  .  .     War  is  repre- 
sented   to  us  not   merely  as  a  possibility   that   might   arise, 
but    as    a    necessity    that    must    come,    and    the    sooner    the 
better.  .  .  .     To  them  [the  war  party]  war  is  quite  a  normal 


26 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


And  from  a 
French 
secret 
agent 


German 
hatred  for 
England 


institution,  not  a  means  to  be  resorted  to  only  in  case  of  great 
necessity." 

And  a  French  secret  agent  who  had  spent  much  time  in  study- 
ing opinion  in  Germany  made  an  exhaustive  report  to  his  own 
government  in  a  secret  document  in  1913.  In  a  summary,  he 
listed  among  the  forces  making  for  war : 

(1)  The  junkers,  "  who  wish  to  escape  the  (new)  taxes  " 
that  must  be  extended  to  their  class  if  peace  continues,  and 
who  "  realize  with  dread  the  growing  power  of  democracy 
and  of  the  Socialists,  and  consider  their  own  class  rule 
doomed  "  without  war. 

(2)  The  capitalist  class  —  the  manufacturers  of  big  guns 
and  armor  plate ;  the  merchants  who  demand  bigger 
markets  ;  "all  who  regard  war  as  good  business,"  including 
those  manufacturers  who  declare  that  the  difficulties  be- 
tween them  and  their  workmen  originate  in  France,  "  the 
home  of  revolutionary  ideas  of  freedom." 

(3)  The  universities  which  teach  war  philosophy. 

The  same  report  declared  :  "  There  are  forces  making  for 
peace,  but  they  are  unorganized,  and  have  no  popular  leaders. 
They  comprise  the  bulk  of  the  artisans  and  peasants;  but  they 
have  almost  no  influence.  They  are  silent  social  forces,  passive 
and  defenseless  against  the  infection  of  a  wave  of  warlike  feeling." 

And  even  those  parts  of  the  population  not  easily  converted 
to  the  doctrine  of  aggressive  war  —  the  peasants  and  the 
Socialist  city  workers  —  were  at  least  taught,  by  constant 
iteration,  to  hate  England  because  of  her  leadership  in  trade, 
and  to  fear  Russia's  growing  numbers,  and  so  to  accept  the 
idea  that  war  was  unavoidable. 

True,  wherever  the  English  flag  floated,  German  traders 
and  German  ships  were  given  freely  every  chance  open  to  Eng- 
lish traders,  in  honest  accord  with  England's  advanced  doc- 
trine of  free  trade  and  free  seas.  But  English  enterprise  still 
led  in  world  commerce.  German  conceit  could  explain  this 
only  by  belief  in  some  secret,  gigantic  trickery  by  their  rivals. 


GERMANY  WILLS  THE  WAR  27 

Moreover  the  molders  of  German  opinion  taught  that  England 
hated  and  feared  Germany,  and  would  welcome  a  chance  to 
destroy  her.  Between  1912  and  1914,  to  be  sure,  the  German 
ambassador  to  England,  Prince  Lichnowsky,1  repeatedly  as- 
sured his  government  of  England's  friendly  and  pacific  feeling. 
English  manufacturers  and  merchants,  he  said,  felt  no  bitter 
envy  of  the  swift  advance  of  German  prosperity,  but  saw  in- 
stead that  such  advance  made  Germany  a  better  customer  for 
English  products.  In  1912  English  statesmen  suggested  that 
the  two  countries  should  cease  their  ruinous  race  in  building 
warships.  Lichnowsky  wrote  to  Berlin  that  the  proposal  was 
made  in  perfect  good  faith.  England,  he  said,  would  un- 
doubtedly try  to  keep  her  lead  in  naval  power,  so  absolutely 
necessary  to  her  safety  as  an  island  state,  but  she  had  no  de- 
sire to  use  her  navy  except  to  preserve  peace.  But  these 
communications,  so  out  of  tune  with  the  purpose  of  the  Ger- 
man government,  never  reached  the  German  people. 

In  1912  there  were  other  long  negotiations  between  German   English  at- 
and  English  governments,  of  which  the  people  at  that  time  knew  !*mpttsht0 
nothing.     The  English  statesman  offered  to  sign  a  declaration  peace 
that   England    would    not    be    a    party    to    any    attack    upon 
Germany.     This  did  not  satisfy  the  Germans.     They  insisted 
that  England  should   promise  neutrality  in  a  European  war, 
no  matter   how   it  might  come.      To   have  done  this  would 
have    been    to   desert  France,    and    to    make    it   more    likely 
that  Germany  would  attack.     Very  properly,  and  in  the  inter- 
ests of  peace,  the  English  government  refused  such  a  shameful 
compact. 


1  This  remarkable  German,  a  cultivated  and  able  Liberal,  wholly  free 
from  the  spirit  of  German  jingoism,  had  been  selected  for  the  position  ap- 
parently in  order  to  blind  English  opinion  as  to  Germany's  warlike  aims. 
When  the  war  came,  he  found  himself  in  disgrace  with  the  Kaiser  and  the 
German  court ;  and  at  the  opening  of  the  second  year  of  the  war  (August, 
1916)  he  wrote  an  account  of  his  London  mission  for  private  circulation 
among  his  friends,  to  justify  himself  in  their  eyes.  A  copy  fell  into  the 
hands  of  the  Allies  during  the  next  year,  and  became  at  once  one  of  the  most 
valuable  proofs  of  the  German  guilt  in  forcing  on  the  war. 


28 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


Germany's 
prepared- 
ness 


Why  Ger- 
many did 
not  fight 
sooner 


As  Bismarck  prepared  his  "  Trilogy  of  Wars,"  of  which  he 
boasted  so  insolently,  in  order  to  make  Prussia  mistress  of 
Germany,  so  after  1890,  even  more  deliberately,  Kaiser  Wilhelm 
and  his  advisers  prepared  vaster  war  to  make  Germany  mistress 
of  the  world.  They  hoarded  gold  in  the  war  chest ;  heaped  up 
arms  and  munitions,  and  huge  stocks  of  raw  materials,  to 
manufacture  more ;  secretly  tried  out  new  military  inventions 
on  a  vast  scale,  —  submarines,  zeppelins,  poison  gases,  new 
explosives  ;  created  a  navy  in  a  race  to  best  England's  ;  bound 
other  ruling  houses  to  their  own  by  marriage  or  by  placing 
Hohenzollerns  directly  on  the  throne  —  in  Russia,  Greece, 
Bulgaria,  Roumania;  reorganized  the  Turkish  Empire  and 
filled  offices  in  the  army  and  navy  there  with  Germans ;  per- 
meated every  great  country,  in  the  Old  World  and  the  New, 
with  an  insidious  and  treacherous  system  of  spies  in  the  guise 
of  friendly  business  shielded  by  innocent  hospitality ;  and 
secured  control  of  banking  syndicates  and  of  newspapers  in 
foreign  lands,  especially  in  Italy  and  America,  so  as  to  influence 
public  opinion. 

In  June,  1914,  the  Kiel  Canal  was  finally  opened  to  the 
passage  of  the  largest  ships  of  war.  Now  Germany  was  ready, 
and  her  war  lords  were  growing  anxious  to  use  their  preparation 
before  it  grew  stale  —  and  before  France  and  Russia,  some- 
what alarmed  now,  should  have  time  to  put  into  effect  their 
new  army  laws  (above).  Moreover  war,  better  than  any- 
thing else,  would  quiet  the  rising  feeling  in  Germany,  especially 
among  the  Socialists,  against  militarism.1 

Germany,  we  know  now,  had  seriously  considered  precipitating 
war  on  several  recent  occasions  connected  with  colonial  ques- 
tions 2  in  Africa;     but  her  leaders  prudently  preferred  a  first 


1  See  C.  Altschul's  German  Militarism  and  Its  German  Critics,  No.  13  in 
the  War  Information  Series. 

2  The  two  Morocco  crises,  1905-190(>  and  1911,  were  each  caused  by  a 
brutal  German  show  of  force.  War  was  averted  the  first  time  only  by 
studious  French  moderation,  and,  the  second  time,  by  England's  plain 
declaration  that  she  would  side  with  France.  Sop  War  Encyclopedia  under 
"Morocco,"  and  Harding's  Great  War,  Ch.  ii,  III. 


GERMANY  WILLS  THE  WAR  29 

war  in  which  England  would  not  be  likely  to  join,  so  that  the 
Teutonic  empires  might  have  only  France  and  Russia  to  deal 
with  at  one  time.  Almost  any  colonial  problem  would  concern 
England,  who  had  been  a  chief  party  in  the  many  European  con- 
ferences that  had  adjusted  colonial  disputes.  In  the  Balkans, 
however,  England  had  shown  no  selfish  interest  for  many  years, 
and  it  was  easy  to  believe  that  she  would  not  fight  upon  a  Balkan 
question. 

And  now  came  just  the  kind  of  occasion  the  German  war  The  Sera- 
lords  wished.     Ever  since  its  unjust  seizure  by  Austria,  Bosnia  Jevo  mur~ 
had   been   seething   with   conspiracies    against   Austrian   rule.    June  28, 
June  28,  1914,  the  heir  to  the  Austrian  throne,   the  Archduke  1914 
Francis,  and  his  wife,  were  assassinated  while  in  Bosnia  by  some 
of  these  conspirators.     The  Serbian  government  had  warned 
the  Archduke  not  to  visit  Bosnia,  fearing  an  attack  upon  him; 
but  the  Austrian  government,  strangely,  had  permitted  him  to 
go  without  any  special  precautions. 

Europe  was  aghast.  Horror  at  the  dastardly  murder  was 
mingled  with  fear  of  a  great  European  war.  Austria,  it  was 
known,  was  greedy  for  Serb  territory.  But  if  she  used  this 
murder  as  an  excuse  to  attack  Serbia,  Russia  was  bound,  by 
honor  and  by  her  interests,  to  defend  that  little  Slav  country. 
And  a  conflict  between  Austria  and  Russia  could  not  but  draw 
in  at  once  Germany  and  France,  and  perhaps  others. 

Austrian  papers  loudly  declared  Serbia  responsible  for  the   The  month 
murder,  inasmuch  as  she  had  not  suppressed  societies  of  con-  of  quiet 
spirators  within  her  borders  agitating  for  Bosnian  liberation. 
But  a  month  passed  quietly  before  the  Austrian  government 
made  any  formal  demand  upon  Serbia,  and  European  fears  died 
down.     That  month,  we  know  now  on  German  evidence,1  was 


1  July  5  there  was  held  at  Potsdam  a  secret  conference  of  military  au- 
thorities, bankers,  and  manufacturers  of  munitions,  and  so  on ;  and  a  war 
program  was  decided  upon.  When  the  story  leaked  out,  German  papers 
denied  it  vehemently ;  but  before  the  war  closed,  the  truth  of  the  meeting 
was  well  established  by  German  evidence.  The  money  kings  asked  a 
month's  delay  that  they  might  "mobilize"  their  finances,  turning  foreign 
bonds  into  cash. 


30 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


The  Aus- 
trian ulti- 
matum, 
July  23 


Serbia's 

conciliatory 

reply 


used  in  ceaseless  but  secret  preparation  to  strike.  Then,  ab- 
solutely without  warning,  Austria  sent  to  little  Serbia  an 
"  ultimatum  "  harsh  almost  beyond  belief,  and  in  the  next 
twelve  days  a  world  war  was  launched. 

Austria  made  ten  demands,  which  may  be  summed  up  under 
three  heads : 

1.  That  Serbia  suppress  all  agitation  against  Austria 
in  newspapers,  schools,  and  organizations  of  any  sort. 

2.  That  she  agree  to  dismiss  from  her  schools,  from  her 
army,  and  from  her  administration  any  teacher  or  official 
to  whom  Austria  might  object. 

3.  That  she  permit  Austrian  officials  to  become  part  of 
the  Serbian  government  so  far  as  necessary  to  attend  to  these 
foregoing  provisions,  and  that  she  allow  such  officials  to  sit 
in  Serbian  courts  to  judge  Serbians  accused  of  connection 
with  the  murders  of  June  28. 

The  Austrian  ambassador  at  Belgrade  told  the  Serbian  govern- 
ment that  it  must  accept  these  terms  without  reservations 
within  48  hours.  The  German  Socialist,  Karl  Liebknecht,  at 
once  said  bravely  that  the  demands  "  were  more  brutal  than 
any  ever  made  upon  any  civilized  state  in  all  human  history  " 
and  that  they  were  "intended  to  provoke  war"  (Vorivarts, 
July  25) ;  but  the  German  government  stoutly  supported 
Austria.  Serbia,  after  trying  vainly  to  get  the  time  limit  ex- 
tended, made  a  humble  and  conciliatory  reply,  accepting  the 
harsh  Austrian  terms  except  those  under  3  above.  These 
plainly  would  have  reduced  her  to  a  mere  vassal  of  Austria. 
But  even  these  she  offered  to  refer  to  longer  negotiation  or  to 
arbitration.  This  reply  the  Austrian  ambassador  declared 
"  dishonest  and  evasive,"  and  he  at  once  left  Serbia. 

The  Austrian  demands  had  been  sent  to  the  Serbian  gov- 
ernment in  the  evening  of  July  23,  too  late  to  allow  any 
consideration  until  the  next  day  —  especially  as  the  Serbian 
ministers  were  scattered  over  the  country  in  a  political  cam- 
paign.    The  Serbian  reply  was  handed  to  the  Austrian  am- 


GERMANY   WILLS  THE   WAR 


31 


bassador  July  25,  at  5 :  58  p.m.  He  and  his  whole  staff  left 
Belgrade  from  the  railroad  station  at  6 :  30.  Plainly,  he  knew 
that  his  terms  could  not  be  accepted.  He  and  his  staff  must 
have  been  packed  and  ready,  hat  in  hand. 

England,  France,  and  Russia  had  been  making  every  effort 
to  get  these  extreme  concessions  from  Serbia,  in  the  interest  of 
peace.  Now  England  repeatedly  asked  Germany  to  help 
preserve  peace  by  getting  Austria  to  accept  Serbia's  submission 
or  by  referring  the  matter  to  arbitration,  or  at  least  to  an  in- 
formal discussion  among  representatives  of  the  Great  Powers, 
so  as  to  try  to  come  to  an  agreement.  Germany  professed  to 
desire  peace  but  found  objections  to  each  suggestion  made  by 
England,  while  she  failed  to  accept  England's  request  that  she 
herself  suggest  some  plan. 

The  German  ambassador  at  London,  Lichnowsky,  believed 
that  if  his  country  had  wished  peace,  a  settlement  could  easily 
have  been  secured,  and,  we  know  now,  he  "  strongly  backed  " 
the  English  proposals ;  but  in  vain.  "  We  insisted  on  war,"  he 
says  in  his  account  to  his  friends ;  "  the  impression  grew  that 
we  wanted  war  under  any  circumstances.  It  was  impossible 
to  interpret  our  attitude  in  any  other  way."  And  again,  "  I  had 
to  support  in  London  a  policy  the  wickedness  of  which  I  recog- 
nized. That  brought  down  vengeance  upon  me,  because  it 
was  a  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost."  l 

So  passed  the  first  four  days,  while  the  world  held  its  breath. 
July  28,  Austria  declared  war  upon  Serbia.  Russia  at  once 
began  to  mobilize 2  troops  on  the  Austrian  frontier,  —  notify- 


England's 
attempt 
for  peace 
balked  by 
Germany 


The  ten 
days, 
July  28- 
August  2 


1  Remember  that  this  was  written  when  the  war  was  only  a  year  old. 
See  above,  p.  27,  note. 

*  In  each  European  country  "mobilization"  was  understood.  Each  of 
the  millions  of  men  in  the  Active  Reserves  would  receive  notice  —  through 
local  authorities,  who  had  been  notified  a  few  hours  earlier  by  the  central 
government,  to  report  at  a  given  hour  at  a  given  place.  At  that  time 
and  place  the  necessary  officers  would  be  present  to  organize  the  men,  as 
they  arrived,  into  military  units ;  and  transportation  would  be  ready  to 
move  each  unit  to  a  larger  rendezvous.  Arms,  munitions,  cannons,  ma- 
chine guns,  food  and  clothing,  and  transportation  for  all  these  things  must, 
also  be  in  readiness. 


32 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


Austria 
hesitates 


Germany 
forces  the 
war 


ing  Germany  that  this  act  was  in  no  way  hostile  to  her,  and  also 
that  no  warlike  action  would  be  taken  against  Austria  so  long 
as  that  country  permitted  Serbia  to  continue  negotiations  for 
peace.  Germany  brusquely  demanded  that  Austria  be  allowed 
her  will  with  Serbia  without  Russian  interference. 

July  30  and  31,  Russia  offered,  twice,  to  stop  her  slow  prepara- 
tions if  Austria  would  promise  to  exact  only  a  moderate  punish- 
ment from  Serbia  and  not  to  destroy  that  little  country's  inde- 
pendence. Now  for  the  first  time  Austria  seemed  ready  to 
yield  somewhat.  And  so  Germany,  which  all  along  had  willed 
the  war,  had  to  come  into  the  open  to  force  it  on.  For  some 
days  (ever  since  July  21)  she  had  secretly  been  concentrating 
troops  on  her  western  frontier,  ready  to  strike  France ;  and 
on  the  evening  of  July  29  a  secret  war  council  at  Potsdam  over- 
ruled the  Kaiser's  last  eleventh-hour  hesitation.  August  1, 
Germany  declared  war  upon  Russia,1  after  an  insulting  twelve- 
hour  ultimatum  demanding  instant  demobilization. 

At  the  same  time  Germany  gave  France  18  hours  in  which 
to  promise  to  abandon  Russia  to  her  fate,  and  was  ready  further 
to  demand  that  France  surrender  certain  fortresses  during  the 
war  as  a  guarantee  of  good  faith.  The  next  day  (August  2) 
German  troops  occupied  neutral  Luxemburg  and  began  to  mass 
upon  the  Belgian  frontier;  and  the  German  government  gave 
Belgium  12  hours  (7  p.m.  to  7  a.m.)  to  decide  whether  she  would 
permit  German  troops  to  cross  her  territory  so  as  to  find  an  un- 
guarded road  into  France.  August  3,  receiving  no  reply  from 
France  to  her  dishonorable  proposals,  Germany  declared  war 
upon  that  country  and  invaded  Belgium,  charging  falsely  that 


1  See  Davis'  Roots  of  the  War,  510-512,  for  the  story  of  a  trick  by  which 
Germany  had  frightened  the  Tsar  into  a  more  warlike  attitude.  See  also 
Harding,  Great  War,  Ch.  III.  Liebknccht  at  the  time  declared  the  fact: 
"The  decision  rests  with  William  II.  .  .  .  But  the  war-lords  are  at  work 
.  .  .  without  a  qualm  of  conscience  ...  to  bring  about  a  monstrous  world 
war,  the  devastation  of  Europe"  (Vorwarts,  July  30,  1914).  A  few  months 
later,  Liebknccht  tried  to  distribute  leaflets  among  the  German  people  to 
tell  them  how  the  government  had  suppressed  knowledge  of  the  peaceful 
aims  of  Russia  and  England. 


GERMANY   WILLS  THE   WAR  33 

France  had  violated  German  territory  —  in  face  of  the  fact 
that,  to  avoid  any  clash  through  hothead  edness,  France  had 
withdrawn  her  troops  everywhere  six  miles  within  her  borders. 

Reckless  falsehood  and  hypocritical  charges  against  others  Hypocrisy 
were  the  method  used  by  Germany  throughout  to  justify  her-   °f  the 
self.     Says  Brand  Whitlock,  American  Ambassador  to  Belgium,   counter- 
recounting  a  long  list  of  such  pretended  excuses  in  those  days :  —  charges 
"  When  he  (the  German)  wished  to  invade  Belgium,  he  said 
(falsely)  that  French  aviators  had  thrown  bombs  on  Nurem- 
berg [meaning  that  they  had  flown  over  Belgium  to  do  so]. 
When  he  wished  to  sack  and  destroy  Louvain,  he  said  (falsely) 
that  civilians  had  fired  on  him.     When  he  wished  to  use  as- 
phyxiating gas,  he  said  (falsely)  the  French  were  using  it.     The 
thing  that  vitiated  the  whole  character  of  modern  Germany  .  .  . 
was    the   lie."     Upright   Germans    themselves    saw    this.     As 
early  as  1909  the  Socialist  Scheidemann  dared  to  say  in  the 
Reichstag  that  lying  was  "  the  most  characteristic  trait  of  the 
Hohenzollerns."     And  all  will  remember  how  Bismarck  boasted 
of  the  forgery  by  which  he  tricked  France  into  war  in  his  day. 

Germany  had  promised,  in  case  Belgium  consented  to  the  Belgium  re- 
passage  of  her  troops,  to  make  good  all  damage,  but  had  threat-  sists 
ened  the  most  savage  consequences  if  her  demand  were  refused. 
Belgium  had  replied  with  heroic  dignity.  Her  neutrality 
had  been  solemnly  and  repeatedly  guaranteed  by  the  Great 
Powers,  including  Prussia,1  and  now  she  herself  was  ready  to 
suffer  martyrdom  to  defend  that  neutrality,  as  she  was  in  honor 
bound  to  do. 

Belgium  also  at  once  appealed  to  England  ;  and  England 
(August  3)  let  Germany  know  that  the  invasion  of  Belgium 
must  stop  or  England  would  declare  war,  as  bound  by  the  most 
solemn     obligations.     The     German     Chancellor,     Bethmann- 


1  Prussia  was  a  party  to  the  original  treaty  of  1839,  guaranteeing  Belgium 
from  invasion  by  any  country,  and  also  to  its  renewal  in  1870 ;  and  the 
German  Empire  in  1871  accepted  for  itself  all  Prussia's  international  obliga- 
tions. 


34 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


England 
"  goes  in 


Holweg,  was  grievously  chagrined.  He  had  believed  that 
"  shop-keeping  England  "  would  refuse  to  fight ;  and  now  he 
expressed  bitterly  to  the  departing  English  Ambassador  his 
amazement  that  England  should  enter  the  war  "  just  for  a  scrap 
of  paper." 

The  next  day  (August  4)  in  his  address  to  the  Reichstag,  the 
Chancellor  himself  admitted  Germany's  guilt.  "  Necessity 
knows  no  law.  Gentlemen,  this  [invasion  of  Belgium]  is  a 
breach  of  international  law.  .  .  .  We  knew  France  stood  ready 
for  an  invasion  [a  false  statement].  The  wrong  —  I  speak 
openly  —  the  wrong  we  thereby  commit,  we  will  try  to  make 
good  as  soon  as  our  military  ends  have  been  attained." 

The  same  day  England  "  went  in."  England,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  would  not  in  any  case  have  looked  on,  to  see  France 
crushed,  but  she  might  have  held  off  too  long  except  for 
the  German  crime  against  Belgium.  This  was  Germany's 
fatal  blunder.  And  the  consciousness  that  she  had  blundered 
called  out  among  almost  all  classes  a  frenzy  of  hate  for  Eng- 
land —  whose  overthrow  in  a  later  war,  it  was  now  openly 
avowed,  had  been  the  real  goal  all  along.  France  was  to  have 
been  crushed  first,  to  leave  England  alone  and  to  enable  Ger- 
many to  launch  her  attack  upon  England  from  near-by  French 
ports  like  Calais.  From  this  time,  too,  the  credulous  German 
masses  were  taught  zealously  that  England  had  willed  the  war 
from  the  first  and  had  tricked  a  peace-loving  Germany  into  it ! 
"  May  God  blast  England  "  became  the  almost  universal  form 
of  daily  greeting. 

Germany  had  indeed  been  tricked,  but  only  by  her  own  greed 
and  conceit  and  her  own  silly  contempt  for  others.  After  all, 
however,  Germany  was  prepared  "  to  the  last  shoe  lace,"  and 
her  opponents,  with  all  the  warning  they  had  had,  were  not 
prepared.  Least  of  all,  was  England  ready  for  war.  She  had 
no  army  worth  mentioning  —  only  a  few  scattered  and  distant 
garrisons ;  and,  what  was  worse,  she  had  no  arms  for  her  eager 
volunteers,  and  no  factories  worth  mention  to  make  munitions. 

Soon  both  parties  claimed   to  be  fighting  for  peace.     But 


GERMANY   WILLS  THE   WAR 


35 


parties 


German  leaders  made  it  plain  that  they  looked  only  to  a  sort  War  aims 
of  peace  won  by  making  Germany  so  supreme  in  the  world  that 
no  other  power  could  possibly  dream  of  withstanding  or  dis- 
obeying her.  The  old  balance  of  power  theory  was  bad  enough  ; 
but  infinitely  worse  was  this  German  theory  of  peace  through 
slavery.  Said  Chancellor  Bethmann-Holweg  (May  28,  1915) : 
"We  must  endure  till  we  have  gained  every  possible  guarantee, 
so  that  none  of  our  enemies  —  not  alone,  not  united  —  will 
again  dare  a  trial  of  strength  with  us." 

Opposed  to  this  ideal  of  a  peace  by  force,  English  statesmen  — 
like  President  Wilson  later  —  set  up  at  once  the  ideal  of  a  peace 
of  righteousness.     Said  Premier  Asquith,  November  9,  1914 : 

"  We  shall  never  sheathe  the  sword,  which  we  have  not  lightly 
drawn,  until  Belgium  recovers  in  full  measure  all  and  more  than 
all  that  she  has  sacrificed,  until  France  is  adequately  secured  against 
the  menace  of  aggression,  until  the  rights  of  the  smaller  nationalities 
of  Europe  are  placed  upon  an  unassailable  foundation,  and  until 
military  domination  of  Prussia  is  wholly  and  finally  destroyed." 

And  said  Sir  Edward  Grey,  the  English  Foreign  Minister, 
January  26,  1916,  in  the  House  of  Commons  : 

"  The  great  object  to  be  attained  ...  is  that  there  shall  not 
again  be  this  sort  of  militarism  in  Europe,  which  in  time  of  peace 
causes  the  whole  of  the  continent  discomfort  by  its  continual  menace, 
and  then,  when  it  thinks  the  moment  has  come  that  suits  itself, 
plunges  the  continent  into  war." 

And  again,  six  months  later  to  an  American  newspaper- 
man : 

"  What  we  and  our  allies  are  fighting  for  is  a  free  Europe.  We 
want  a  Europe  free,  not  only  from  the  domination  of  one  nationality 
by  another,  but  from  hectoring  diplomacy  and  the  peril  of  war,  free 
from  the  constant  rattling  of  the  sword  in  the  scabbard,  from  per- 
petual talk  of  shining  armor  and  war  lords.  We  are  fighting  for 
equal  rights  ;  for  law,  justice,  peace  ;  for  civilization  throughout 
the  world  as  against  brute  force." 

For  Further  Reading.  —  In  the  flood  of  printed  matter  re- 
garding the  background  of  the  war,  the  difficulty  is  to  select.     The 


36  THE   WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

following  suggestions  are  made  with  particular  view  to  their  per- 
manent value  and  at  the  same  time  to  their  suitability  for  the  general 
reader:  —  /  Accuse  (by  an  anonymous  German),  esp.  26-141;  J.  E. 
Barker's  Modern  Germany,  297-317,  798-829  ;  W.  S.  Davis'  Roots 
of  the  War,  Chs.  xvii,  xviii,  xxiv  ;  J.  W.  Gerard's  My  Four  Years 
in  Germany,  Chs.  iv,  v  ;  Prince  Lichnowsky's  Memoirs;  Gibbons' 
New  Map  of  Europe,  esp.  pp.  1-367.  For  evidence  that  the  German 
government  was  preparing  for  immediate  war  even  before  June  28, 
see  S.  B.  Harding's  Great  War,  Ch.  iii,  V,  VI,  and  on  Belgium's 
neutrality,  the  same,  Ch.  vi,  III. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  FIRST   YEAR,    1914 

The  Germans  had  planned  a  short  war.  They  expected  The  Ger- 
(1)  to  go  through  Belgium  swiftly  with  little  opposition,  and  manPlan 
to  take  Paris  within  four  weeks  ;  (2)  then  to  swing  their  strength 
against  Russia  before  that  unwieldy  power  could  get  into  the 
war  effectively,  and  crush  her;  and  (3),  with  the  Channel  forts 
at  command,  to  bring  England  easily  to  her  knees,  if  she  should 
really  enter  the  war. 

Thanks  to  Belgium,  the  first  of  their  expectations  fell  through  Foiled  by 
—  and  the  others  fell  with  it.  The  Germans  had  allowed  six  e  gium 
days  to  march  through  Belgium.  But  for  sixteen  days  little 
Belgium,  alone  in  her  agony,  under  the  command  of  her  hero 
king,  Albert,  held  back  mighty  Germany.  When  the  French 
began  mobilization,  after  August  2,  they  began  it  to  meet  an 
honest  attack  through  Lorraine ;  but  before  the  Belgians  were 
quite  crushed,  the  French  managed  to  shift  enough  force  to 
the  north,  along  with  a  hurried  and  poorly  equipped  "  Ex- 
peditionary Army  "  of  100,000  from  England,  to  delay  the 
German  advance  through  northern  France  for  three  weeks 
more  —  ground  that  the  German  plan  had  allowed  eight  days 
to  win.  Tremendously  outnumbered,  outflanked,  trampled 
into  the  dust  in  a  ceaseless  series  of  desperate  battles,  the  thin 
lines  of  Allied  survivors  fell  back  doggedly  toward  the  Marne. 
There  Joffre,  the  French  commander-in-chief,  was  collecting 
all  resources  for  his  final  stand. 

The   Germans    drove   on   furiously,    outrunning   even   their  The  battle 
supply  trains.     September  3,  the  French  government  withdrew  ^*®e 
to  Bordeaux.     But  September  6,  when  the  boastful  invaders 
were  in  sight  of  the  towers  of  Paris,  only  20  miles  away,  their 

37 


38        THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

guns  thundering  almost  in  the  suburbs,  the  French  and  English 

turned  at  bay  in  a  colossal  battle  along  a  two-hundred-mile 

front.     JofTre  issued  to  all  corps  commanders  his  famous  order, 

"  The  hour  has  come  to  let  yourselves  be  killed  rather  than  to 

yield  ground.     Troops  must  let  themselves  be  shot  down  where 

they  stand  rather  than  retreat."     The  crisis  came  on  the  fourth 

day  when  the  Germans,  anxious  to  use  their  superior  numbers 

in  an  enveloping  movement  around  both  the  Allied  wings,  had 

perilously  weakened  their  center.     With  true  military  genius, 

General  Foch,   a  trusted  lieutenant  of  Joffre's,   divined   the 

situation,  and  hurled  his  exhausted  troops  desperately  at  that 

key-position.     Even  then  only  splendid  resolution  won  the  day. 

Joffre  had  sent  an  anxious  inquiry  to  ask  Foch's  situation. 

The    dogged   Foch    telegraphed   back  hastily :    "  My  right  is 

beaten  back ;  my  center  is  crushed ;  my  left  has  been  repulsed. 

Situation  excellent.     I  am  attacking  again  with  my  left."     And 

when  a  subordinate  reported,  "  My  men  are  exhausted,"  Foch 

replied    curtly,     "  So    are    the   enemy.     Attack !  "     And    this 

time,  the  attack  broke  the  invader's  line. 

To  save  themselves  from  destruction,  the  Germans  retreated 

hastily  to  the  line  of  the  Aisne.     Later  attempts  by  them  to 

resume  the  offensive  failed  ;  but  the  Allies  were  too  exhausted 

to  dislodge  them.     Both  sides  "  dug  in  "  along  a  360-mile  front, 

from  Switzerland  to  the  North  Sea.     Then  began  a  "  trench 

warfare,"  new  in  history.     The  positions  stabilized,  and,  on 

the  whole,  in  spite  of  repeated  and  horrible  slaughter,  were  not 

materially  altered  on  this  Western  front  until  the  final  months 

of  the  war  four  years  later. 

New  New  and  ever  more  terrible  ways  of   fighting  marked  this 

methods  of     warfare,  with  increasing  ferocity  and    horror  from  month   to 
warfare  ,         ,    ,        , 

month.     Ordinary   cannon  were  replaced   by  huge   new  guns 

whose  high  explosives  blasted  the  whole  landscape  into  in- 
describable and  irretrievable  ruin  —  burying  whole  battalions 
alive,  and  forming  great  craters  where  snipers  found  the  best 
shelter  in  future  advances.  Ordinary  defense  works  were 
elaborated  into  many  lines  of  connected  trenches  beneath  the 


THE   FIRST   YEAR,    1914  39 

earth,  protected  by  mazy  entanglements  of  barbed  wire  and 
strengthened  at  intervals  by  bomb-proof  "  dugouts  "  and 
underground  chambers  of  heavy  timbers  and  cement.  To 
plow  through  these  intrenchments,  cavalry  gave  way  to  mon- 
strous, heavily  armored  motor-tanks.  New  guns  belched 
deadly  poison  gases,  slaying  whole  regiments  in  horrible  stran- 
gling torture  when  the  Germans  first  used  this  devilish  device, 
in  April,  1915,  —  until  English  and  French  chemists  invented 
gas  masks  that  afforded  fair  protection  if  donned  in  time  — 
and  infernal  "  flame-throwers  "  wrapped  whole  ranks  in  liquid 
fire.  Scouting  was  done,  and  gunfire  directed,  by  airplanes 
equipped  with  new  apparatus  for  wireless  telegraphy  and  for 
photography ;  and  daily  these  aerial  scouts,  singly  or  in  fleets, 
met  in  deadly  combat  ten  thousand  feet  above  the  ground,  — 
combat  that  ended  only  when  one  or  both  went  hurtling  down 
in  flames  to  crashing  destruction.  Worse  than  these  terrors 
even,  the  soldiers  dreaded  the  beastly  filthiness  of  trench  war ; 
the  never  absent  smell  of  rotting  human  flesh;  the  torture  of 
vermin ;  the  dreary  monotony. 

The  original  German  plan  had  been  wrecked  at  the  Marne,   The  East 

and  that  name  now  ranks  with  Marathon.     The  Russians  had  *""**  in 

1914 

mobilized  more  swiftly  than  friend  or  foe  had  believed  possible, 
and  were  swarming  into  East  Prussia  threatening  Austria. 
August  26  they  were  defeated  ruinously  at  Tannenberg  by 
Hindenburg,  a  Prussian  veteran  of  1870,  with  the  most  fearful 
slaughter  ever  known  in  one  battle  in  all  history;  but  against 
the  Austrians  they  fared  better.  After  winning  a  great  battle 
on  the  frontier,  they  forced  their  way  into  Austrian  Galicia 
and  captured  Lemberg.  Germany  was  forced  to  divert  troops 
from  France  to  succor  her  Austrian  ally  during  the  rest  of  the 
campaign,  and  when  the  year  1914  closed,  the  Russians  were 
holding  their  own  in  Poland,  with  good  prospects  of  renewing 
the  invasion  of  the  Austrian  realms. 

Austria  had  another  pressing  job.     The  story  of  the  hatching 
of  the  war  makes  clear  why  she  felt  it  necessary  promptly  to 


40 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   NEW  AGE 


Turkey 
joins  the 
Teutonic 
empires 


Germany 
turns  back 
to  the  West 
front 


crush  Serbia.  That  little  country  of  fighters,  however,  sup- 
plied with  necessary  munitions  by  the  other  Allies  through 
Salonika,  had  repulsed  two  Austrian  invasions,  and  now  all 
Austrian  soldiers  were  needed  to  meet  the  peril  in  Galicia. 

Meantime  Turkey  had  joined  the  Central  Powers.  We 
know  now  that  Turkey  made  a  formal  war  alliance  with  Ger- 
many at  the  opening  of  the  struggle  (August  4) ;  but  it  was 
thought  best  to  keep  this  secret  for  a  time.  In  October,  how- 
ever, two  German  warships,  fleeing  from  an  English  squadron, 
received  shelter  within  the  Dardanelles.  The  German  am- 
bassador then  carried  through  a  fictitious  sale  of  these  ships 
to  "  neutral  "  Turkey  ;  and,  flying  the  Turkish  flag  but  manned 
by  their  old  crew  and  officers,  the  two  vessels  raided  Russian 
Odessa.  Accordingly,  in  November,  England,  France,  and 
Russia  declared  war  on  Turkey.  At  this  time,  the  Ottoman 
state  was  still  shut  off  from  its  Teutonic  allies  by  a  broad  belt 
of  neutral  or  hostile  Balkan  territory,  and,  isolated  as  it  was, 
England  and  Russia  hoped  soon  to  crush  it. 

In  the  West,  after  it  became  plain  that  a  deadlock  had  de- 
veloped, the  German  government  realized  the  need  of  attacking 
England  directly  without  waiting  to  annihilate  France.  In 
August  and  September,  British  sea-power  had  swept  German 
shipping  from  the  seas.  If  the  war  was  to  be  a  long  one,  this 
strangling  of  German  commerce  would  be  decisive.  Hence 
the  attack  upon  England  must  be  tried  at  once  if  any  possible 
base  could  be  won.  As  a  necessary  step,  the  Germans  turned 
to  complete  their  conquest  of  the  Belgian  coast.  King  Albert 
of  Belgium  and  the  bulk  of  his  heroic  little  army  were  still 
holding  Antwerp.  The  huge  German  siege  guns  now  beat  to 
powder  the  protecting  forts,  and  the  invaders  captured  that 
city  on  October  9,  —  though  in  their  exulting  parade  they 
foolishly  permitted  the  Belgian  army  to  escape  towards  France. 
Immediately  after,  they  secured  the  port  of  Ostend  and  most  of 
the  rest  of  the  Belgian  coast. 

To  attack  England  successfully,  however,  against  her  un- 
conquerable fleet,  Germany  needed  better  and  nearer  ports  for 


THE   FIRST   YEAR,    1914  41 

a  base,  —  at  least  Dunkirk  and  Calais ;  and  October  16  they 
began  the  four  weeks'  Battle  of  the  Yser  in  order  to  force  the 
last  natural  barrier  protecting  those  Channel  ports.  Checked 
by  the  cutting  of  the  dykes,  they  next  brought  their  force 
against  the  thin  English  lines  near  Ypres.  The  gallant  resist- 
ance offered  the  magnificent  "  Prussian  Guards  "  in  the  First 
Battle  of    Ypres  by  the  outnumbered  and  ill-armed  English  But  fails  at 

makes  one  of  the  most  heroic  stories  in  all  history.     In  vain,   th®Yserand 

"  at  Ypres 

day  after  day  for  a  long  month,  with  slight  intervals  for  prepara- 
tion, did  the  overwhelming  German  forces  deliver  their  reck- 
less mass  attacks  upon  the  opponents  whom  they  had  styled 
"  a  contemptible  little  army."  They  wore  themselves  down 
upon  that  dying  but  unconquered  line  without  ever  becoming 
able  to  deliver  a  knock-out  blow,  losing  more  men  than  the 
total  English  force  ;  and  winter  conditions  set  in,  November  17, 
with  the  desired  ports  still  in  the  hands  of  the  Allies. 

Thus  closed  the  first  war-season.     On  the  west  front,  Ger-   Close  of  the 
many  had  failed.     The  French  government  had  come   back  season 

to  Paris,  and  the  French  army  was  in  perfect  condition.  Eng- 
land's gallant  first  army  had  died  devotedly  to  gain  her  time ; 
but  the  time  had  been  fairly  well  used.  England  reorganized 
herself  for  war  —  built  new  munition  factories  —  though  not 
enough,  time  was  to  prove ;  poured  forth  gold  lavishly  for 
Russia  and  France ;  saved  and  suffered  and  toiled  and  drilled 
at  home,  and  put  into  the  field  eventually  a  splendid  fighting 
force  of  six  million  men,  —  a  million  ready  for  the  second  year. 
England  had  looked  upon  the  war  as  a  "  beastly  "  interruption ; 
but  she  was  rapidly  reorganizing  her  life  on  a  war  basis.  True, 
deceived  by  a  stupid  censorship,  she  had  not  yet  grasped  the 
full  danger,  and  was  sadly  behind,  especially  in  the  output 
of  high  explosives.  From  the  first,  her  superb  navy  swept  The  English 
the  seas,  keeping  the  boastful  German  navy  bottled  up  in  navy 
harbor  or  in  the  South  Baltic,  and  gradually  running  down 
the  few  German  raiders  that  at  first  escaped  to  prey  on  British 
commerce.  This  service  of  England  to  the  world,  if  there  had 
been  no  more,  ought  forever  to  win  her  the  world's  gratitude. 


42 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   NEW  AGE 


England's 
daughter- 
common- 
wealths 
join 


The  blockade  of  Germany  was  not  enforced  rigidly,  for  fear  of 
offending  American  opinion,  but  already  it  was  creating  a 
serious  food  problem  for  Germany.  And  on  the  other  hand, 
America's  resources  in  food  and  munitions,  closed  to  Germany 
by  the  English  navy,  were  all  available  to  the  Allies.  Except 
for  the  English  navy,  Germany  would  have  won  the  war  in 
the  second  year. 

Further,  England's  distant  and  peaceful  daughter-common- 
wealths, —  Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand,  South  Africa,  and 
even  her  Indian  Empire,  —  were  rousing  themselves  splendidly 
to  the  defense  of  their  common  civilization.  And  Japan, 
England's  ally  in  the  Orient,  had  entered  the  war,  seizing  Ger- 
many's holdings  in  China  and  many  of  her  islands  in  the  Pacific. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  SECOND   YEAR,    1915 

At  the  opening  of  1915,  the  chief  danger  to  England  and  The  danger 
France  was  their  too  great  trust  in  Russia,  —  their  belief  that  °oUapgg an 
the  Russian  "  steam-roller,"  fully  prepared,  would  now  crush 
its  way  to  Berlin  or  at  least  into  Hungary.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  there  was  no  ground  for  this  expectation.  Russia  was 
near  the  end  of  its  supply  of  munitions,  and  its  industries  were 
too  primitive  to  cope  with  longer  war.  The  minister  of  war,  too, 
had  secretly  sold  himself  to  Germany  and  was  doing  his  best 
to  hinder  military  movements  and  to  waste  and  misdirect  the 
scanty  supplies.1  Similar  treason  permeated  a  large  part  of 
the  official  classes  and  the  court  circle,  centering  around  the 
Hohenzollern  wife  of  the  Tsar. 

The  Germans  understood  this  Russian  situation — though  the 
Allies  did  not  —  and  accordingly  they  planned  only  to  hold 
their  trenches  in  the  West  and  to  concentrate  their  energies  in 
putting  Russia  quickly  out  of  the  war. 

Russia  was  almost  isolated  from  the  other  Allies.     Germany 

closed  the  Baltic ;  Turkey  closed  the  Black  Sea ;  Archangel 

was  ice-closed  during  most  of  the  year ;   and  Vladivostok  was 

so  distant  as  to  be  almost  negligible  for  the  coming  year.     If 

Russia  were  to  receive  badly  needed  supplies,  the  Allies  must  Necessity 

force   the  Dardanelles   and   capture   Constantinople.     Success   ~f* the 

r  r  Allies  se- 

in  this  project  in  1915  would  have  ended  the  war.     The  waver-  cure  the 
ing  Balkan  states  would  have  joined  Russia.     Turkey  would  Dardanelles 
have  been  crushed.     The  conglomerate,  ill-cemented  Austrian 


1  Two  years  later  this  man  was  executed  for  high  treason.  Of  Russia's 
four  important  munition  factories,  the  largest  was  directly  controlled, 
secretly,  by  Germany. 

43 


44        THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

empire  would  have  been  open  to  invasion  on  the  south ;  and  the 
Allies  must  have  won. 
The  attempt  Thus  both  parties  planned  now  to  transfer  the  decisive 
an  a  ure  struggle  to  the  East  front.  The  Allies  were  able  to  strike  first. 
In  February,  the  Allied  navy  attacked  the  Dardanelles.  The 
outer  forts  were  taken  or  battered  down,  but  the  inner  fortresses 
resisted  successfully.  In  March  a  more  formidable  attack  all 
but  succeeded.  Had  the  Allies  known  how  exhausted  the 
Turkish  ammunition  was,  they  might  have  opened  the  straits. 
Not  informed  of  this,  however,  and  discouraged  by  heavy  losses 
in  ships,  the  navy  now  waited  nearly  two  months  for  the  arrival 
of  land  forces  to  cooperate  in  storming  the  Turkish  defenses. 
When  the  British  transports  arrived,  late  in  April,  the  Turks 
were  perfectly  prepared.  British  and  Australian  troops  were 
landed,  with  horrible  loss,  under  destructive  fire ;  but  the 
heroic  attempts  of  the  Anzacs  *  to  storm  the  fortresses  of  the 
Gallipoli  Peninsula  failed  deplorably.  In  August  the  attempt 
was  renewed,  and  came  once  more  just  short  of  decisive  success. 
After  this,  there  was  no  chance  against  the  greatly  strengthened 
Turkish  positions. 
The  Ger-  Meantime,  in  May,  the  Germans  opened  their  drive  against 

agains"76       Russia   in    Galicia   with  the  first  enormous  concentration  of 
Russia  artillery   in    the    war.     The    Russians    were    admirably    com- 

manded in  the  field,  and  they  fought,  as  always,  with  reckless 
valor.  But  their  cannon  were  useless  from  want  of  ammuni- 
tion, and  even  with  the  infantry  many  a  soldier  had  to  wait 
until  a  comrade  had  fallen  before  he  could  get  a  gun  to  fight 
with.  With  amazing  success,  under  the  circumstances,  their 
retreat  was  saved  from  becoming  a  rout.  But  the  Austrians 
recaptured  Lemberg  in  June,  and  the  Germans  took  Warsaw 
early  in  August.  The  Teutonic  armies  then  cleared  most  of 
eastern  Poland  of  Russian  garrisons  before  they  halted  their 
drive  late  in  September,  in  order  to  attempt  a  more  important' 
drive  on  the  southeast  (below).     Russia  had  lost  an  enormous 


1  Australian  Arew  Zealand  Auxiliary  Corps. 


THE  SECOND  YEAR,    1915  45 

number  of  lives,  with  a  million  and  a  half  of  prisoners  ;  she  had 
been  driven  out  of  a  huge  territory ;  and  her  offensive  power 
had  been  destroyed  for  months  to  come. 

On  the  West  front,  there  was  continuous  trench  fighting,  with  Trench  war 
much  loss  of  life,  but  the  only  important  event  of  the  year  was  on  the  West 
the  German  offensive  at  Ypres  (Second  Battle  of  Ypres,  April  17- 
May  17)  when  the  English  line  was  almost  broken  by  the  Ger- 
man asphyxiating  gas,  then  first  used  in  war.  That  the  line 
held  against  this  devilish  attack  was  due  largely  to  the  splendid 
gallantry  of  the  new  Canadian  divisions.  Lack  of  high  ex- 
plosives kept  the  Allies  from  attempting  a  serious  offensive 
until  just  before  the  season  closed  —  in  September  —  and  the 
event  proved  that  the  supplies  even  then  were  insufficient  to 
prepare  the  way  for  successful  infantry  attack,  so  that  the  only 
result  was  one  more  terrible  lesson  with  pitiful  sacrifice  of  lives. 

The  Germans  had  stopped  their  triumphant  progress  into  Bulgaria 

Russia  onlv  to  avail  themselves  of  a  more  attractive  program.   i°ms  ^e 

Central 

In  October,  Bulgaria  finally  joined  the  Central  powers  (fear  Empires 
of  Russia  gone),  hoping  to  wreak  vengeance  on  Serbia  for 
1913  and  to  make  herself  the  ruling  state  in  the  Balkans.  Her 
secretly  prepared  army  invaded  Serbia  from  the  east  while  a 
huge  Teutonic  force  attacked  from  the  north.  Serbia  had 
counted  upon  her  treaty  of  1913  with  Greece  for  protection 
against  possible  Bulgarian  attack.  But  King  Constantine  of 
Greece,  brother-in-law  of  the  German  Kaiser,  now  repudiated 
that  treaty  and  dismissed  his  prime  minister  Venizelos  for 
desiring  to  keep  Greece  faithful  to  her  ally.  A  Franco-British 
army  had  been  sent  to  Salonika,  but,  after  the  defection  of 
Greece,  it  could  accomplish  nothing.  In  spite  of  their  gallant 
resistance,  the  Serbs  were  overwhelmed.  The  survivors  of  Serbia  is 
their  army  made  their  way  over  the  mountains  of  Albania  to  crushed 
the  coast,  and  were  ferried  across  to  Corfu  by  British  ships. 
All  of  Serbia  and  Montenegro  and  much  of  Albania  was  occupied 
by  the  Bulgars  and  Teutons ;  and  the  Bulgarian  atrocities 
toward  the  conquered  populations  during  the  next  years  ex- 
ceeded anything  those  unhappy  peoples  had  ever  suffered  from 


46        THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

the  Turk.     The  military  gain  by  Germany  in  this  campaign 
was  immense.     She  now  dominated  a  solid  broad  belt  of  terri- 
tory from  Berlin  and  Brussels  and  Warsaw  to  Bagdad  and 
Persia. 
Italy  joins  This  gloomy  second  year  of  the  war  brought  to  the  Allies 

the  Allies  onjy  one  gam#  From  the  outset  of  the  struggle,  Italy  had 
repudiated  the  Triple  Alliance.  The  Teutonic  powers,  who 
had  forced  on  the  war  without  consulting  her  in  the  least  par- 
ticular, had  not  expected  help  from  her,  but  they  did  hope  that 
she  would  remain  neutral.  The  sympathies  of  the  liberty- 
loving  Italian  people,  however,  were  overwhelmingly  with  the 
Allies ;  and  the  government  saw  its  opportunity  to  recover  the 
"  unredeemed  "  Italian  territory  about  Triest  and  Trent.  It 
drove  a  hard  bargain  with  the  Allied  governments,  securing 
in  a  secret  treaty  (since  known  as  the  Secret  Pact  of  London, 
April,  1915)  promises  for  not  only  those  districts  but  also  for 
Dalmatia  —  at  the  expense  of  martyred  Serbia.  Then  May  23, 
just  when  the  Russian  retreat  was  beginning,  Italy  declared 
war  on  Austria,  and  launched  her  armies  in  a  drive  across  the 
Isonzo  for  Triest.  But  the  Austrians  had  fortified  the  Alpine 
passes  with  every  modern  device,  and  for  two  years  the  Italians 
made  little  advance,  in  spite  of  much  gallant  fighting.  The 
threat  of  their  advance,  however,  kept  large  Austrian  forces 
busy,  and  so  lessened  the  pressure  upon  the  Allies  elsewhere 
at  critical  moments. 

Germany's  This  same  year,  1915,  saw  also  a  serious  extension  of  Ger- 
"  Frightful-  many's  barbarous  submarine  warfare,  with  the  invasion  of 
neutral  rights  and  the  murder  of  neutral  lives.  This  was  to 
bring  America  into  the  war  two  years  later,  and  so  hasten  the 
close ;  but  it  was  only  one  more  phase  of  the  deliberately 
adopted  German  policy  of  "  Frightfulness "  which  from  the 
first  had  compelled  the  attention  of  the  world  outside  Europe. 

For  centuries,  international  law  had  been  building  up  rules 
of  "civilized"  war,  so  as  to  protect  non-combatants  and  to 
preserve  some  shreds  of  humanity  among  even  the  fighters. 


ness 


THE   SECOND  YEAR,    1915  47 

But  German  military  rulers,  for  some  years,  had  referred 
slurringly  to  such  "  moderation  "  as  a  deceitful  attempt  on 
the  part  of  the  weak  to  protect  themselves  against  the  strong. 
Humane  considerations  the  official  German  War  Manual  re- 
ferred to  as  flabby  sentimentality.1 

The  first  practical  application  of  this  German  doctrine  of 

Frightfulness  had  been  given  to  the  world  in  1900.     In  that 

year  a  force  of  German  soldiers  set  out  to  join  forces  from  other 

European  countries  and  from  the  United  States  in  restoring 

order  in  China,  after  the  massacre  of  Europeans  there  in  the 

Boxer  Rebellion.     July  27  the  Kaiser  bade  his  troops  farewell 

at  Bremerhaven  in  a  set  address.     In  the  course  of  that  brutal 

speech  he  commanded  them :     "  Show  no  mercy !     Take  no  The 

prisoners  !     As  the  Huns  made  a  name  for  themselves  which  is  Kaisers 

•ii  v  •  i       i  /•       t      command  to 

still  mighty  in  tradition,  so  may  you  by  your  deeds  so  fix  the  emulate  the 

name  of  German  in  China  that  no  Chinese  shall  ever  again  dare  Huns 
to  look  at  a  German  askance.  .  .  .  Open  the  way  for  Kultur."  2 
At  the  opening  of  the  World  War,  this  "  Hun  "  policy  was 
put  into  effect  in  Western  Europe.  Never  since  the  ancient 
blood-spattered  Assyrian  monarchs  stood  exultingly  on  pyra- 
mids of  mangled  corpses  had  the  world  seen  so  huge  a  crime. 
Belgium  and  northeastern  France  were  devastated.  Whole 
villages  of  innocent  non-combatants  were  wiped  out,  —  men, 
women,  children,  —  burned  in  their  houses  or  shot  and  bayoneted 
if  they  crept  forth.     All  this  by  deliberate  order  of  the  "  high 

1  Extracts  in  Harding,  Ch.  vii,  IV. 

2  The  troops  reached  China  too  late  to  be  of  use.  American,  Japanese, 
French,  and  Italian  troops  had  already  restored  order.  But  the  Germans 
made  a  number  of  savage  "punitive  expeditions"  for  booty  and  rapine.  In 
these  they  indulged  not  merely  in  indiscriminate  murder  of  innocent  non- 
combatants,  but  even  in  many  indescribable  outrages  upon  women.  General 
Chaffee,  the  commander  of  the  United  States  troops,  and  the  senior  officer 
among  the  Western  forces,  called  together  the  commanders  of  the  other  allies, 
and  then  as  their  spokesman  interviewed  Von  Waldersee,  the  German  com- 
mander. Von  Waldersee  declared  haughtily  that  there  would  be  no  change 
in  his  policy.  His  soldiers  "must  have  some  chance  to  indulge  themselves." 
Said  Chaffee:  "We  have  not  come  to  make  requests,  but  to  tell  you  that 
this  sort  of  thing  must  stop."     It  stopped. 


48 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


command,"  like  the  frightfulness  of  the  old  Assyrians,  to  break 
the  morale  of  the  enemy,  to  make  it  easy  to  hold  the  conquered 
territory  with  a  few  soldiers,  and  to  terrify  neighboring  small 
peoples  —  Dutch,  Danes,  Swiss  —  so  that  they  might  not 
dare  risk  a  like  fate. 

War  always  develops  brutes ;  and  the  terrible  nerve  strain 
of  this  war  undoubtedly  tended,  more  than  ordinary  war,  to 
paralyze  the  moral  sense  and  the  will.  The  German  soldiers, 
too,  more  than  the  soldiers  of  the  Allies,  had  been  brutalized 
by  bestial  treatment  from  their  officers,  and,  without  orders, 
they  committed  thousands  of  nameless  outrages  upon  girls, 
and  Sioux-Indian  mutilations  upon  captives.  But  this,  horrible 
as  it  was,  leaves  less  stain  upon  Germany  than  the  calm  de- 
cision for  this  policy  in  cold  blood  by  the  polished  and  easy- 
living  German  rulers. 

In  like  fashion,  Zeppelins  raided  England,  not  mainly  to 
destroy  military  depots,  but  to  drop  bombs  upon  resident  parts 
of  London  and  upon  peaceful  villages,  murdering  women  and 
children.  In  the  years  1915-1917,  their  aircraft  raids  murdered 
nearly  4000  non-combatants  without  accomplishing  any  military 
purpose.1  So,  too,  German  airplanes  bombed  hospitals  and 
Red  Cross  trains,  assassinating  doctors  and  nurses  along  with 
the  wounded  soldiers ;  and  soon  the  submarines  began  to  torpedo 
hospital  ships,  clearly  marked  as  such.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  find 
any  imaginable  crime  against  the  war  customs  of  all  civilized 
nations  that  was  not  committed  and  boasted  of  by  Germany 
within  a  few  months  after  this  war  began.  No  wonder  that 
even  neutral  lands  began  to  know  Germans  no  longer  by  the 
kindly  "  Fritz  "  but  only  by  "  Hun  "  or  "  Boche."  2 


1  England  long  refused  to  adopt  this  barbarous  policy,  even  for  retaliation. 
She  finally  did  so,  somewhat  later  than  France ;  but  more  efficient  results 
were  found  in  developing  anti-aircraft  guns  and  in  the  use  of  protecting 
airplanes,  so  that  in  the  last  years  of  the  war  a  Zeppelin  raid  was  too  danger- 
ous to  be  tried  often. 

4  On  all  this,  see  (Icrman  War  Practices  and  German  Treatment  of  Conquered 
Territory,  volumes  edited  by  Dana  C.  Munro  and  other  well-known  American 
historians,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Committee  on  Public  Information. 


THE   SECOND   YEAR,    1915  49 

With  German  approval,  and  under  the  eyes  of  German  officers, 
the  Turks  massacred  a  majority  of  the  Armenians,  and  the  Bul- 
garians massacred  in  wholesale  fashion  the  non-combatant  Serbian 
population.  A  word  from  Germany  would  have  stopped  these 
needless  and  revolting  excesses  against  humanity,  which  were  upon 
a  scale  even  huger  than  Germany's  own  crimes  in  the  West,  but 
which  were  committed  by  races  from  whom  we  do  not  expect 
"  civilized  "  warfare. 

To  the  United  States,  even  more  than  to  France  or  England,  America's 
the  war  came  as  a  surprise ;  and  for  some  time  its  purposes  and  a^neut^L 
its  origin  were  obscured  by  a  skillful  German  propaganda  in 
our  press  and  on  the  platform.  President  Wilson  issued  the 
usual  proclamation  of  neutrality,  and  followed  this  with  un- 
usual and  solemn  appeals  to  the  American  people  for  a  real 
neutrality  of  feeling.  For  two  years  the  administration  clung 
to  this  policy.  Any  other  course  was  made  difficult  for 
the  President  by  the  fact  that  many  Democratic  leaders  in 
Congress  were  either  pro-German  or  extreme  pacifists.  More- 
over the  President  seems  to  have  hoped  nobly  that  if  the  United 
States  could  keep  apart  from  the  struggle,  it  might,  at  the  close, 
render  mighty  service  to  the  world  in  a  world-council  to  estab- 
lish lasting  world  peace. 

True,  our  best  informed  men  and  women  saw  at  once  that 
France  and  England  were  waging  our  war,  battling  and  dying 
to  save  our  ideals  of  free  industrial  civilization,  and  of  common 
decency,  from  a  militaristic  despotism.  Tens  of  thousands  of 
young  Americans,  largely  college  men,  made  their  way  to  the  Forces  for 

fighting  line,  as  volunteers  in  the  Canadian  regiments,  in  the  and  against 

.  .  .  .  neutrality 

French  Foreign  Legion,  or  in  the  air  service  ;  and  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  more  among  us  blushed  with  shame  daily 
that  other  and  weaker  peoples  should  struggle  and  suffer  in 
our  cause  while  we  stood  idly  by. 

But  to  other  millions  —  long  a  majority  —  the  dominant 
feeling  was  a  deep  thankfulness  that  our  sons  were  safe  from 
slaughter,  our  homes  free  from  the  horror  of  war.  Nor  was 
this  attitude  as  strange  or  as  grossly  selfish  then  as  it  seems 
now.     Vast  portions  of  our  people  had  neither  cared  nor  known 


50  THE   WAR  AND   THE   NEW  AGE 

about  the  facts  back  of  the  war :  to  such,  that  mighty  struggle 
between  Wrong  and  Right  was  merely  "  a  bloody  European 
squabble."  And  even  the  better  informed  of  our  people  found 
it  not  altogether  easy  to  break  with  our  century-long  tradition 
of  a  happy  aloofness  from  all  Old-World  quarrels. 

Such  indifference  or  apathy,  however,  needed  a  moral  force 
to  give  it  positive  strength.  And  this  moral  force  for  neutrality 
was  not  wholly  lacking.  Many  ardent  workers,  and  some 
leaders,  in  all  the  great  reform  movements  believed  that  in 
any  war  the  attention  of  the  nation  must  be  diverted  from 
the  pressing  need  of  progress  at  home.  To  them  the  first 
American  gun  would  sound  the  knell,  for  their  day,  of  all  the 
reforms  that  they  had  long  battled  for.  Still  breathless  from 
their  lifelong  wrestlings  with  Vested  Wrongs,  they  failed  to 
see  that  German  militarism  and  despotism  had  suddenly 
towered  into  the  one  supreme  peril  to  American  life.  And 
so  many  noble  men,  and  some  honored  names,  cast  their  weight 
for  neutrality.  And  then,  cheek  by  jowl  with  this  misled  but 
honorable  idealism,  there  flaunted  itself  a  coarse  pro-German 
sentiment  wholly  un-American.  Sons  and  grandsons  of  men 
who  had  fled  from  Germany  to  escape  despotism  were  heard 
now  as  apologists  for  the  most  dangerous  despotism  and  the 
most  barbarous  war  methods  the  modern  world  had  ever  seen. 
Organized  and  obedient  to  the  word  of  command,  this  element 
made  many  weak  politicians  truckle  to  the  fear  of  "the  German 
vote." 

These  forces  for  neutrality  were  strengthened  by  one  other 
selfish  motive.  The  country  had  begun  to  feel  a  vast  business 
prosperity.  Some  forms  of  business  were  demoralized  for  a 
time ;  but  soon  the  European  belligerents  were  all  clamoring 
to  buy  all  our  spare  products  at  our  own  prices  —  munitions 
of  war,  food,  clothing,  raw  materials.  To  be  sure,  the  English 
navy  soon  shut  out  Germany  from  direct  trade,  though  she 
long  continued  an  eager  customer,  indirectly,  through  Holland 
and  Denmark ;  but  in  any  case  the  Allies  called  ceaselessly 
for  more  than  we  could  produce.     Non-employment  vanished; 


THE   SECOND  YEAR,    1915  51 

wages  rose  by  bounds ;  new  fortunes  piled  up  as  by  Aladdin's 
magic.  A  busy  people,  growing  richer  and  busier  day  by  day, 
ill-informed  about  the  real  causes  of  the  war,  needed  some 
mighty  incentive  to  turn  it  from  the  easy,  peaceful  road  of 
prosperous  industry  into  the  stern,  rugged  paths  of  self-denial 
and  war.  A  little  wisdom,  and  Germany  might  readily  have 
held  us  bound  to  neutrality  in  acts  at  least,  if  not  always  in 
feeling. 

But  more  and  more  Germany  made  neutrality  impossible  for   Germany 
us.     From  the  first  the  German  government  actively  stirred   ^^^  -^^ 
up  bad  feeling  toward  us  among  its  own  people  because  our  possible 
people  used  the  usual  and  legal  rights  of  citizens  of  a  neutral 
power  to  sell  munitions  of  war  to  the  belligerents.     Germany 
had  securely  supplied  herself  in  advance,  and  England's  navy 
now  shut  her  out  from  the  trade  in  any  case.     So  she  tried, 
first  by  cajolery  and  then  by  threats,  to  keep  us  from  selling 
to  her  enemies  —  which  would  have  left  them  at  her  mercy, 
taken  by  surprise  and  unprepared  as  they  were. 

Our  legal  right  to  sell  munitions  she  could  not  question  Quarrel 
seriously.  Only  two  years  before,  she  herself  had  been  selling 
just  such  munitions  freely  to  the  warring  Balkan  nations.  She 
demanded  of  us  not  that  we  comply  with  international  law,  but 
that  we  change  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  insure  her  victory  —  in 
such  a  way  as  would  really  have  made  us  her  ally.  For  our 
government  to  have  yielded  to  her  demands,  and  forbidden 
trade  in  munitions  during  the  war,  would  have  been  not  neu- 
trality, but  a  plain  breach  of  neutrality  —  and  a  direct  and 
deadly  act  of  war  against  the  Allies. 

Our  government  firmly  refused  to  notice  these  arrogant 
German  demands.  And,  says  an  authorized  statement  (in 
How  the  War  Came  to  America) : 

"  Upon  the  moral  issue  involved  the  stand  taken  by  the  United 
States  was  consistent  with  its  traditional  policy  and  with  obvious 
common  sense.  For  if,  with  all  other  neutrals,  we  refused  to  sell 
munitions  to  belligerents,  we  could  never  in  time  of  a  war  of  our 
own  obtain  munitions  from  neutrals,  and  the  nation  which  had 


over  muni- 
tions 


52 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


The  sub- 
marine con- 
troversy in 
its  early 

stages 


The  new 
phase  in 
1915 


The  Lusi- 
tania 


accumulated  the  largest  reserves  of  war  supplies  in  time  of  peace 
would  be  assured  of  victory.  The  militarist  state  that  invested 
its  money  in  arsenals  would  be  at  a  fatal  advantage  over  the  free 
people  who  invested  their  wealth  in  schools.  To  write  into  inter- 
national law  that  neutrals  should  not  trade  in  munitions  would  be 
to  hand  over  the  world  to  the  rule  of  the  nation  with  the  largest 
armament  factories.  Such  a  policy  the  United  States  of  America 
could  not  accept." 

The  submarine  gave  rise  to  a  special  controversy.  The 
U-craft  were  not  very  dangerous  to  warships  when  such  vessels 
were  on  their  guard.  Unarmed  merchantmen  they  could 
destroy  almost  at  will.  But  if  a  U-boat  summoned  a  merchant- 
man to  surrender,  the  merchantman  might  possibly  sink  the 
submarine  by  one  shot  from  a  concealed  gun,  and  in  any  case 
the  U-boat  had  little  room  for  prisoners.  Thus  it  soon  became 
plain  that  submarine  warfare  upon  merchant  ships  was  neces- 
sarily barbarous  and  in  conflict  with  all  the  principles  of  inter- 
national law.  If  it  were  to  be  efficient,  the  U-boat  must  sink 
without  warning.  In  the  American  Civil  War,  a  Confederate 
privateer,  the  Alabama,  destroyed  hundreds  of  Northern  mer- 
chant ships,  but  scrupulously  cared  for  the  safety  of  the  crews 
and  passengers.  But  from  the  first  the  German  submarines  tor- 
pedoed English  and  French  peaceful  merchant  ships  without 
notice.  Little  chance  was  given  even  for  women  and  children 
to  get  into  the  lifeboats,  and  of  course  many  neutral  passengers 
were  murdered. 

And  now,  in  February,  1915,  Germany  proclaimed  a  "  sub- 
marine blockade  "  of  the  British  Isles.  She  drew  a  broad  zone 
in  the  high  seas  about  Britain,  declaring  that  any  merchant 
ship,  even  of  neutral  nations,  within  those  waters  was  liable 
to  be  sunk  without  warning. 

The  world  could  not  believe  that  Germany  would  really 
practice  the  crime  she  threatened.  But  May  7,  1915,  the  great 
English  liner  Lusitania  was  torpedoed  without  any  attempt 
to  save  life.  Nearly  twelve  hundred  non-combatants  were 
drowned,  many  of  them  women  and  children  !  The  Germans 
hailed  this  dastardly  deed  as  heroic,  celebrating  it  with  holidays 


Wilson's 
notes  " 


THE   SECOND  YEAR,   1915  53 

and  a  commemorative  medal.  With  characteristic  mendacity, 
too,  their  government  asserted,  falsely,  that  the  Lusitania  was 
really  a  war  vessel,  loaded  with  munitions. 

One  hundred  and  fourteen  of  the  murdered  Lusitania  passengers 
were  American  citizens;  and  there  at  once  went  up  from  much 
of  America  a  fierce  cry  for  war ;  but  large  parts  of  the  country, 
remote  from  the  seaboard,  were  still  indifferent  to  a  "  European 
struggle,"  and  there  were  not  lacking  some  shameless  apologists 
for  even  this  massacre.  President  Wilson,  zealous  to  preserve  President 
peace,  used  every  resource  of  diplomacy  to  induce  Germany  to 
give  up  its  horrible  submarine  policy.  At  the  same  time  he 
distinctly  pointed  out,  in  note  after  note,  that  a  continuance  in 
that  policy  would  force  America  to  fight. 

The  "  First  Lusitania  Note  "  (after  declaring  that  the  use  of 
submarines  against  merchant  ships  must  necessarily  endanger  the 
lives  of  passengers  and  of  neutrals,  and  after  urging  Germany  to 
give  up  a  practice  so  contrary  to  civilized  warfare  and  to  the  law 
of  nations)  closed  : 

"  The  Imperial  German  Government  will  not  expect  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United.  States  to  omit  any  word  or  any  act  necessary  to 
the  performance  of  its  sacred  duty  of  maintaining  the  rights  of  the 
United  States  and  its  citizens,  and  of  safeguarding  their  free  exer- 
cise "  (June  13,  1915). 

The  "  Third  Lusitania  Note  "  (July  21)  refused  to  consider  the 
tissue  of  evasions  put  forward  by  Germany  as  in  any  way  "  relevant " 
to  a  discussion  of  "  the  grave  and  unjustifiable  violations  of  the 
rights  of  American  citizens,"  and  uttered  solemn  warning,  that  if 
these  "  illegal  and  inhuman  "  acts  were  persisted  in,  "  they  would 
constitute  an  unpardonable  offense  "... 

"  Repetition  by  the  commanders  of  German  naval  vessels  of  acts 
in  contravention  of  these  rights  must  be  regarded  by  the  Government 
of  the  United  States  .  .  .  as  deliberately  unfriendly." 

These  well-meant  efforts  of  the  President  were  answered  by 
the  German  government  with  quibbles,  cynical  falsehoods,  and 
contemptuous  neglect.  Other  merchant  vessels  were  sunk, 
and  finally  (March,  1916)  the  sinking  of  the  Sussex,  an  English 
passenger  ship,  again  involved  the  murder  of  American  citizens. 
President  Wilson's  note  to  Germany  took  a  still  sterner  tone 


54 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


Wilson's 
seeming 
victory 


and  specifically  declared  that  one  more  such  act  would  cause 
him  to  break  off  diplomatic  relations.  Germany  now  seemed 
to  give  way.  She  promised,  grudgingly  and  with  loopholes 
for  future  use,  to  sink  no  more  passenger  or  merchant  ships  — 
unless  they  should  attempt  to  escape  capture  —  without  pro- 
viding for  the  safety  of  passengers  and  crews  (May  4). 

This  episode,  running  over  into  the  third  year,  closed  the 
first  stage  of  this  controversy.  President  Wilson's  year  of 
negotiation  seemed  to  have  won  a  victory  for  civilization.  As 
he  afterward  complained,  the  precautions  taken  by  the  Ger- 
mans to  save  neutral  or  non-combatants  proved  distressingly 
meager,  but  for  some  time  "  a  certain  degree  of  restraint  was 
observed." 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  THIRD   YEAR,   1916 

The  year  1916  brought  the  struggle  back  to  the  Western  England 

front.     England    had    awakened    from   her   complacency   and  fuUy    , 
.  .  aroused 

was  at  last  putting  forth  her  full  strength.  The  splendid  vol- 
unteer army  was  now  supplemented  by  conscription,  wholly 
new  to  England,  and  the  "  work  or  fight  "  rule  was  applied  to 
every  able-bodied  man  between  18  and  45.  The  commander- 
in-chief,  General  French,  a  veteran  of  the  Boer  War,  had  been 
succeeded  (October,  1915)  at  his  own  request  by  a  younger  man, 
Sir  Douglas  Haig.  Haig  would  be  ready  to  strike  by  mid- 
summer. 

Accordingly  Germany  planned  to  strike  first  and  put  France  The  German 

out  before  Britain  was  quite  ready.     February  21,  weeks  before   Crown 

,,  •        i  .  i  i  Pnnce  at- 

campaigns  would   usually  open  in   that  region,   she  made  a  tacks 

gigantic  effort  to  deal  a  mortal  blow  by  an  attack  on  Verdun.   Verdun 
The  capture  of  that  famous  fortress,  it  was  felt,  would  open  the 
road  to  Paris.     Certainly  it  would  have  been  a  terrific  shock 
to  the  French  morale. 

For  four  days  the  Germans  gained  ground  swiftly.  A  vast 
concentration  of  artillery  prepared  the  way  for  each  assault, 
and  then  huge  masses  of  trained  soldiery  carried  their  ob- 
jectives each  day,  —  though  with  almost  incredible  losses. 
But  France  rushed  in  her  reserves  by  thousands  in  motor  busses,1 
and  after  February  25  her  defense  steadily  tightened,  meeting 
the  haughty  German  boasts  with  the  tight-lipped  defiance  — 
"  They  shall  not  pass."     For  two  months  more  the  Germans 

1  This  method  of  transportation  saved  France.  There  was  no  time  to 
construct  military  railroads,  and  human  legs  could  not  do  the  job.  The 
motor  bus  won  a  new  importance. 

55 


56 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


The  British 
advance  on 
the  Somme 


Brief  Rus- 
sian re- 
vival 


kept  up  the  attack  with  some  expectation  of  final  success ;  and 
then  for  still  two  months  more  they  renewed  the  assault  from 
week  to  week,  at  a  staggering  cost  of  life,  because  the  High 
Command  dreaded  the  blow  to  its  military  prestige  involved 
in  a  confession  of  failure. 

France  was  saved.  The  German  failure  was  generally  as- 
cribed to  the  Crown  Prince,  who  had  directed  the  campaign. 
Germany  now  put  Hindenburg,  the  victor  in  the  East,  in  su- 
preme command  of  all  her  armies. 

July  1  the  new  British  armies  began  their  carefully  prepared 
drive  along  the  Somme.  Lloyd-George  himself  had  taken  over 
the  ministry  of  munitions  some  months  before  ;  and  this  time  — 
for  the  first  time  during  the  war  —  the  English  had  a  superiority 
in  guns  and  high  explosives,  while  their  tanks,  now  used  first, 
wrought  terrible  havoc  in  the  German  lines.  But  the  in- 
tended French  drive,  further  south,  did  not  come  to  a  head  — 
partly  because  of  the  exhaustion  of  the  Verdun  campaign, 
partly,  it  was  whispered,  because  at  this  moment  the  French 
legislative  chamber,  having  already  driven  Joffre  into  retire- 
ment, saw  fit  again  to  interfere  disastrously  with  the  plans  of 
the  military  staff.  The  English  struggled  on  magnificently 
for  four  months,  winning  back  a  considerable  extent  of  French 
soil,  with  many  villages,  and  driving  a  deep  dent  into  the  Ger- 
man line.  But  that  line  was  still  unbroken  when  the  unusually 
severe  weather  of  November  brought  the  campaign  to  a  close. 
Two  hundred  thousand  young  Englishmen  had  given  their 
lives  and  six  hundred  thousand  more  lay  mangled  in  hospitals. 
But  they  had  proved  that  industrial  England  in  two  years  had 
created  and  trained  an  army  more  than  a  match,  unit  for  unit, 
for  the  veteran  army  of  militaristic  Germany. 

The  war  on  the  East  front  during  this  season  furnished  two 
surprises  on  the  side  of  the  Allies,  but  neither  was  of  lasting 
value.  (1)  Russia  showed  a  remarkable  recovery.  Early  in 
June  her  armies  took  the  offensive  against  the  Austrians.  For 
a  month  they  won  swift  success  —  in  great  part  because  their 
*  opponents  were  largely  subject  Slavo-Czechs,  who  welcomed 


THE   THIRD   YEAR,    1916  57 

chances  to  surrender  to  a  possible  deliverer  of  their  provinces 
from  Austrian  oppression.  By  July,  however,  the  new  supplies 
of  Russian  ammunition  had  again  given  out,  and  Germany  had 
rushed  to  Austria's  rescue  a  number  of  veteran  divisions  from 
the  West  front.  Russia  had  been  saved  from  complete  collapse, 
the  year  before,  by  the  desire  of  the  Teutonic  powers  to 
crush  Serbia  and  to  consolidate  their  hold  upon  the  Ottoman 
world.  Now  she  was  saved  again  for  the  moment  by  sacrificing 
Roumania. 

(2)  For  now  Roumania  had  entered  the  war.     This  story  is  Roumania 

still   obscure.     Roumania  wished   of   course   to   recover  from  war and 

Austria  the  great  Roumanian  province  of  Transylvania,  and  is  betrayed 
apparently  the  Tsar  had  induced  her  to  go  in  too  soon  by  y  ussia 
promises  of  support  that  was  never  given.  The  German 
traitorous  court  party  at  Petrograd,  now  in  control  over  the 
weak  Tsar,  planned  a  separate  peace  with  Germany,  and  seems 
to  have  intended  deliberately  to  buy  easy  terms  for  Russia  by 
betraying  Roumania  to  the  Central  Powers.  Bulgarians  and 
Teutons  entered  doomed  Roumania  from  south  and  west. 
December  16  the  capital  fell,  and  only  the  rigors  of  winter 
enabled  the  Roumanian  army  to  keep  a  hold  upon  a  narrow 
strip  of  its  country.  The  large  Allied  army  at  Salonika  did 
not  stir:  why  is  not  yet  fully  explained.  No  doubt  if  it  left 
its  base,  it  was  in  peril  of  being  stabbed  in  the  back  by  Con- 
stantine  of  Greece  ;  and  the  Tsar  vetoed  all  proposals  of  effective 
measures  against  that  petty  despot  —  from  tenderness  for  a 
fellow  monarch. 

Thus  the  year  1916,  too,  ended  gloomily.  Germany  had  Conditions 
tremendously  strengthened  her  position  in  the  East,  and  had  a*  ,*$!?-  ose 
lost  nothing  in  the  West.  Her  supply  of  man-power,  it  was 
suspected,  was  running  low,  along  with  stocks  of  fats,  rubber, 
cotton,  and  copper,  and  other  metals.  Her  poorer  classes  were 
suffering  bitterly  from  undernourishment  —  especially  the 
children,  whose  death-rate  had  tremendously  increased.  But 
her  ruling  classes  felt  no  pinch  and  showed  no  discouragement ; 
and  the  world  was  uncertain  how  far  her  domination  in  the 


58        THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

East  might  retrieve  her  markets.  Moreover,  Russia  was 
crumbling:  transportation  was  broken  down;  the  industrial 
system  —  always  crude  —  was  practically  gone  ;  hunger  and 
despair  ruled  the  peasantry ;  and  only  the  stubborn  resistance 
of  the  Duma  and  of  a  few  great  generals  seemed  to  prevent  a 
separate  Russian  peace,  with  complete  victory  for  Germany 
on  the  East.  On  the  other  hand,  England,  France,  and  Italy 
were  vastly  better  prepared  for  the  struggle  than  ever  before, 
and  were  about  ready  for  their  maximum  effort.  If  they  could 
make  that  effort  before  Russia  collapsed,  they  still  hoped  for 
success. 

And  there  were  not  wanting  signs  that  the  Allies  were  soon 
to  receive  long-delayed  help  from  another  quarter. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  FOURTH   YEAR,   1917 

America  Enters  and  the  War  Spreads 

In  America,  Woodrow  Wilson  had  been  reelected  President  Woodrow 
in  November,  1916,  after  a  peculiar  campaign.     Many  of  his   ^^^  m 
followers,  especially  in  the  West  and  among  the  workingmen,   1916 
shouted  the  slogan,  "  He  kept  us  out  of  war."     On  the  other 
hand,  Mr.  Wilson's  firmness  in  defending  American  rights,  and 
his  plain  drift  toward  the  Allies,  drew  upon  him  the  hatred 
of  large  organized  pro-German  elements.     Neither  party  made 
the  war  a  clear  issue. 

But  no  sooner  had  the  dust  of  this  political  campaign  cleared  German 
away  than  the  American  people  began  to  find  indisputable  ne°utrafamS 
proofs  of  new  treacheries  and  new  attacks  upon  us  by  Ger-  America 
many,  even  within  our  oivn  borders.  The  official  representatives 
of  Germany  in  the  United  States,  protected  by  their  diplomatic 
position  (and  bound  by  every  sort  of  international  law  and 
common  decency  not  to  interfere  in  any  manner  with  our 
domestic  affairs),  had  placed  their  hirelings  as  spies  and  plotters 
throughout  our  land.  They  had  used  German  money,  with 
the  approval  of  the  German  government,  to  bribe  our  officials 
and  even  to  "  influence  "  our  Congress.  They  had  paid  public 
speakers  to  foment  distrust  and  hatred  toward  the  Allies. 
They  had  hired  agitators  to  stir  up  strikes  and  riots  in  order 
to  paralyze  our  industries.  They  incited  to  insurrection  in 
San  Domingo,  Haiti,  and  Cuba,  so  as  to  disturb  our  peace. 
They  paid  wretches  to  blow  up  our  railway  bridges,  our  ships, 
our  munition  plants,  with  the  loss  of  millions  of  dollars  of 
property  and  with  the  murder  of  hundreds  of  peaceful  American 
workers.     Each  week  brought  fresh  proof  of  such  outrage  — 

59 


60 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


German 
threats  and 
hostility 


America 
forced  to 
choose  be- 
tween   tem- 
porary war 
and  per- 
manent 
militarism 


more  and  more  frequently,  formal  proof  in  the  courts.  The 
governments  of  the  Central  Powers  paid  no  attention  to  our 
complaints,  or  to  the  evidence  we  placed  before  them  regard- 
ing these  crimes  ;  and  so  finally  President  Wilson  dismissed 
the  Austrian  ambassador  (who  had  been  directly  implicated) 
and  various  guilty  officers  connected  with  the  German  embassy.1 
All  this  turned  our  attention  more  and  more  to  the  hostility 
to  our  country  plainly  avowed  for  years  by  German  leaders. 
Said  the  Kaiser  himself  to  our  ambassador  (October  22,  1915) 
at  a  time  when  our  government  was  showing  extreme  gentleness 
in  calling  Germany  to  account  for  her  murder  of  peaceful 
American  citizens  on  the  high  seas,  —  "America  had  better 
look  out.  ...  /  shall  stand  no  nonsense  from  America  after 
this  war."  Other  representative  Germans  threatened  more 
specifically  that  when  England  had  been  conquered,  Germany, 
unable  to  indemnify  herself  in  exhausted  Europe  for  her  terrible 
expenses,  would  take  that  indemnity  from  the  rich  and  un- 
warlike  United  States.  Our  writers  began  to  call  our  attention 
to  the  fact  that  this  plan  had  been  cynically  avowed  in  Germany 
for  years  before  the  war  began  {Conquest  and  Kultur,  102-112). 
Slowly  we  opened  our  eyes  to  the  plain  fact  that  just  as  the 
conquest  of  France  had  been  intended  mainly  as  a  step  to  the 
conquest  of  England,  so  now  the  conquest  of  England  was  to 
be  a  step  to  the  subjugation  of  America.  It  came  home  to  us 
that  our  fancied  security  —  unprepared  for  war  as  we  were  — 
was  due  only  to  the  protecting  shield  of  England's  fleet.  If 
Germany  came  out  victor  from  the  European  struggle,  we  must 
give  up  forever  our  unmilitaristic  life,  and  turn  our  country 
permanently  into  a  huge  camp,  on  a  European  model,  as  our 
only  chance  for  safety  from  invasion  and  rapine — and  there  was 
much  doubt  whether  time  would  be  given  us  to  form  such  a 
camp.  To  live  in  peace,  as  we  wished  to  live,  we  must  help 
crush  the  militaristic  power  that  hated  and  despised  and  at- 
tacked peace.     German  despotism  and  peace  for  free  peoples 

1  For  proven  guilt,  see  the  notes  to  President  Wilson's  Flag  Day  Address, 
as  published  by  the  Committee  of  Public  Information,  Washington,  D.C. 


THE   FOURTH   YEAR,    1917  61 

could  not  exist  in  the  same  world.     We  had  long   hoped  to 

keep  the  peace  by  being  peaceful.     But  now  peace  had  gone. 

We  could  win  peace  back  only  by  fighting  for  it. 

President  Wilson  strove  still  to  avoid  war.     Even  the  com-  Wilson's 

plete  breaking  off  of  diplomatic  relations,  should  that  come,   P1    ft_r 
,  .  tempts  for 

he  pointed  out,  would  not  necessarily  mean  war.  At  the  same  peace 
time  he  had  begun  to  speak  solemn  warning  to  our  own  people 
that  we  could  not  keep  out  of  the  struggle,  or  out  of  some  like 
struggle,  unless  peace  could  be  secured  soon  and  upon  a  just 
basis.  December  22,  he  sent  to  all  the  warring  governments 
a  note  asking  them  to  state  their  aims.  The  Allies  demanded 
"  restoration  and  reparation,"  with  an  adjustment  of  disputed 
territories  according  to  the  will  of  the  inhabitants,  and  "  guar- 
antees "  for  future  safety  against  German  aggression.  Germany 
replied  evasively,  making  it  plain  that  her  own  suggestion  at 
this  same  time  for  a  peace  conference  was  merely  sparring  for 
time. 

Then  January  22,  1917,  the  President  read  to  Congress  a 
notable  address  proposing  a  League  of  Nations  to  enforce  Peace, 
and  outlining  the  kind  of  peace  which,  he  thought,  the  United 
States  would  join  in  guaranteeing,  —  not  a  Caesar's  peace, 
not  a  peace  of  despotic  and  irresponsible  governments,  but  a 
peace  made  by  free  peoples  (among  whom  the  small  nations 
should  have  their  full  and  equal  voice)  and  "  made  secure  by 
the  organized  major  force  of  mankind." 

Germany  had  ready  a  new  fleet  of  enlarged  submarines,  and    Germany 

she  was  about  to  resume  her  barbarous  warfare  upon  neutrals.   fesumes 

unre- 

She  thought  this  might  join  the  United  States  to  her  foes ;  but   stricted  " 

she  held  us  impotent  in  war,  and  believed  she  could  keep  us   submarine 
,       .    ,  warfare 

busied  at  home.     To  this  last  end,  through  her  ambassador  at 

Washington  —  while  he  was  still  enjoying  our  hospitality  — 

she  had  secretly  been  trying,  as  we  learned  a  little  later,  to  get 

Mexico  and  Japan  to  join  in  an  attack  upon  us,  promising  them 

aid  and  huge  portions  of  our  western  territory. 

January    31,    the    German   government   gave   a   two-weeks 

notice   that   it  was   to   renew   its   "  unrestricted  "   submarine 


62 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


The  United 
States 
breaks  off 
diplomatic 
relations 


"Armed" 
neutrality 


policy,  explaining  to  its  own  people,  with  moral  callousness, 
why  it  had  for  a  time  appeared  to  yield  to  American  pressure  — 
and  offering  to  America  an  insulting  privilege  of  sending  one 
ship  a  week  to  England  provided  it  were  painted  in  stripes  of 
certain  colors  and  width,  and  provided  it  followed  a  certain 
narrow  ocean  lane  marked  out  by  Germany.  President  Wilson 
at  once  dismissed  the  German  ambassador,  according  to  his 
promise  of  the  preceding  March,  recalled  our  ambassador, 
Gerard,  from  Berlin,  and  appeared  before  Congress  to  announce, 
in  a  solemn  address,  the  complete  severance  of  diplomatic 
relations  —  expressing,  however,  a  faint  hope  that  the  German 
government  might  still  refrain  from  compelling  us,  by  some 
"  overt  act,"  to  repel  force  by  force.  By  March  1,  Germany 
had  begun  again  actually  to  sink  passenger  ships  and  murder 
more  Americans  ;  and  on  March  3,  the  President  asked  Congress 
to  approve  his  plan  of  placing  armed  guards  from  the  nation's 
forces  on  our  merchant  ships.  More  than  500  of  the  531  mem- 
bers of  the  two  Houses  were  eager  to  vote  their  approval ;  but 
a  filibustering  minority  prevented  a  vote  in  the  Senate  until 
the  expiration  of  the  session  on  the  next  day. 

March  12,  in  exercise  of  his  constitutional  powers,  the  Presi- 
dent did  put  guards  on  our  merchant  vessels.  Germany 
announced  that  such  guards  if  captured  would  be  treated  as 
pirates.  Meantime,  many  more  Americans  had  been  murdered 
at  sea  by  the  sinking  of  neutral  vessels.1  The  temper  of  the 
nation  was  changing  swiftly.  Apathy  vanished.  Direct  and 
open  opposition  to  war  there  still  was  from  extreme  pacifists 
and    from    pro-Germans,    including    the    organization    of    the 

1  Besides  the  eight  American  vessels  sunk  before  March,  1916,  eight  had 
been  sunk  in  the  one  month  from  February  3  to  March  2,  1917.  During  the 
two  months,  February  and  March,  105  Norwegian  vessels  were  sunk,  with  the 
loss  of  328  lives.  By  April  3,  1917,  according  to  figures  compiled  by  the 
United  States  government,  686  neutral  vessels  had  been  sunk  by  Germany 
without  counting  American  ships.  When  we  turn  to  the  still  more  important 
question  of  lives,  we  count  up  226  American  citizens  slain  by  the  action  of 
German  submarines  before  April,  1917.  For  details,  see  The  War  Message 
and  the  Facts  Bt  hind  It.  Published  by  the  Committee  on  Public  Information, 
Washington,  D.  C. 


THE   FOURTH   YEAR,    1917  63 

Socialist  party :  but  the  great  majority  of  the  nation  roused 
itself  to  defend  the  rights  of  mankind  against  a  dangerous 
government  running  amuck,  and  turned  its  eyes  confidently 
to  the  President  for  a  signal.  And  April  2  President  Wilson 
appeared  before  the  new  Congress,  met  in  special  session,  to  Declaration 
ask  it  to  declare  that  we  were  now  at  war  with  Germany.  April"  1917 
April  6,  by  overwhelming  votes,  that  declaration  was  adopted. 

America  went  to  war  not  to  avenge  slights  to  its  "  honor," 
or  merely  to  protect  the  property  of  its  citizens,  or  even  merely 
to  protect  their  lives  at  sea.  America  went  to  war  not  merely 
in  self-defense.  We  did  war  for  this,  but  more  in  defense  of 
free  government,  in  defense  of  civilization,  in  defense  of  hu- 
manity.    Said  President  Wilson  in  his  War  Message : 

"  The  present  German  submarine  warfare  against  commerce  is  a  American 
war  against  all  mankind.  .  .  .  The  challenge  is  to  all.  .  .  .  Neu-  war  a*ms 
trality  is  no  longer  feasible  or  desirable,  when  the  peace  of  the  world 
is  involved,  and  the  freedom  of  its  peoples,  and  when  the  menace  to 
that  peace  and  freedom  lies  in  the  existence  of  autocratic  govern- 
ments backed  by  organized  force  which  is  controlled  wholly  by 
their  will,  not  the  will  of  their  people.  .  .  .  We  have  no  quarrel 
with  the  German  people.  ...  A  steadfast  concert  for  peace  can 
never  be  maintained  except  by  a  partnership  of  democratic  nations. 
No  autocratic  government  could  be  trusted  to  keep  faith  within  it. 
Only  free  peoples  .  .  .  can  prefer  the  interests  of  mankind  to  any 
narrow  interests  of  their  own.  .  .  . 

"  We  are  now  about  to  accept  the  gage  of  battle  with  the  natural 
foe  to  liberty.  .  .  .  We  are  glad  ...  to  fight  for  the  ultimate  peace 
of  the  world  and  for  the  liberation  of  its  peoples,  the  German  people 
included.  .  .  . 

"  The  world  must  be  made  safe  for  democracy.  .  .  .  We  have 
no  selfish  ends.  We  desire  no  conquests,  no  dominion.  We  seek 
no  indemnities  for  ourselves,  no  material  compensations  for  the 
sacrifices  we  shall  freely  make. 

"  It  is  a  fearful  thing  to  lead  this  great,  peaceful  country  into  war, 
into  the  most  terrible  and  disastrous  of  all  wars,  civilization  itself 
seeming  to  be  in  the  balance.  But  the  right  is  more  precious  than 
peace  ;  and  we  shall  fight  for  the  things  which  we  have  always 
carried  nearest  our  hearts  —  for  democracy,  for  the  right  of  those 
who  submit  to  authority  to  have  a  voice  in  their  own  governments, 


64  THE    WAR   AND   THE   NEW   AGE 

for  the  rights  and  liberties  of  small  nations,  for  a  universal  dominion 
of  right  by  such  a  concert  of  free  peoples  as  shall  bring  peace  and 
safety  to  all  nations.  .  .  . 

"  To  such  a  task  we  can  dedicate  our  lives  and  our  fortunes, 
everything  that  we  are  and  everything  that  we  have,  with  the  pride 
of  those  who  know  that  the  day  has  come  when  America  is  privileged 
to  spend  her  blood  and  her  might  for  the  principles  that  gave  her 
birth  and  happiness  and  for  the  peace  which  she  has  treasured. 
God  helping  her,  she  can  do  no  other." 

American  Splendid  was  the  awakening  of  America,  following  quickly 

on  the  President's  call.  True,  some  misled  pacifists  and  the 
positive  pro-German  forces  still  did  their  utmost  to  give  aid 
and  comfort  to  the  Kaiser.  Patriotic  pacifists,  however,  like 
Mr.  Bryan,  recognized  that  to  oppose  our  entering  the  war 
was  a  matter  of  judgment,  but  that  now  to  hinder  the  success 
of  America  in  the  war  was  treason.  Mr.  Bryan  had  resigned 
from  the  Cabinet,  in  June  of  1915,  as  a  protest  against  the 
President's  firmness  in  pressing  the  Lusitania  matter :  but  now 
he  promptly  declared,  "  The  quickest  road  to  peace  is  through 
the  war  to  victory  "  ;  and  he  telegraphed  the  President  an 
offer  of  his  services  in  any  capacity.  Henry  Ford,  who  had  led 
a  shipload  of  peace  enthusiasts  to  Europe  the  year  before,  to 
plead  with  the  warring  governments  there,  now  placed  his  great 
automobile  factories  absolutely  at  the  disposal  of  the  govern- 
ment, and  soon  became  a  valued  worker  in  one  of  the  govern- 
ment's new  War  Boards.  Charles  Edward  Russell,  choosing 
to  be  an  American  rather  than  a  Socialist  if  he  could  not  be 
both,  became  one  of  a  great  Commission  to  Russia,  and  on  his 
return  supported  and  explained  the  war  with  voice  and  pen. 
Like  action  was  taken  by  other  leading  Socialists,  as  by  John 
Spargo  and  Upton  Sinclair.  And  the  oldest  Socialist  paper 
in  America,  The  Appeal  to  Reason,  soon  declared  itself  con- 
vinced by  President  Wilson's  statements,  and  came  out  as  The 
New  Appeal  in  support  of  the  war.  The  great  majority  of 
Americans  of  German  birth  or  descent  also  rallied  promptly  to 
the  flag  of  the  land  they  had  chosen.  Most  important  of  all, 
the  organized  wage-earners  spoke  with  emphasis  and  unity  for 


THE   FOURTH   YEAR,    1917  65 

America  and  democracy.  Led  by  their  patriotic  president, 
Samuel  Gompers,  the  delegates  of  the  American  Federation 
in  November,  by  a  vote  of  21,579  local  unions  as  against  402, 
organized  the  Alliance  for  Labor  and  Democracy  to  support  the 
war  and  to  combat  a  pacifist  "  People's  Council  "  which  had 
been  claiming  to  speak  for  labor. 

And  now  the  war  spread  more  widely  still.  Cuba  at  once  The  war 
followed  the  example  of  the  United  States  in  declaring  war  sprea  s 
against  Germany,  and  most  of  the  countries  of  South  and 
Central  America  either  took  the  same  action  within  a  few  months 
or  at  least  broke  off  diplomatic  relations  with  the  Central 
European  Powers.1  Portugal  had  entered  the  war  in  1916, 
because  of  her  close  alliances  with  England.  Siam  and  China 
came  in  a  little  later. 

This  lining  up  of  the  world  had  mighty  moral  value,  and  no 
small  bearing  upon  the  matter  of  supplies.  In  particular,  the 
German  ships  which,  since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  had  been 
seeking  refuge  in  the  harbors  of  these  new  belligerents  were 
now  seized  for  the  Allies,  and  helped  to  make  good  the  losses 
due  to  submarines.  Few  of  these  powers  except  America, 
however,  had  much  direct  effect  upon  military  operations. 

And  in  spite  of  the  entry  of  America,  Germany  continued   German 
to  win  great  success  in  1917.     As  the  Germans  had  hoped, 
Russia  dropped  out.     The  Tsar's  reactionary  or  incompetent 
ministers  had  maddened  the  Petrograd  populace  by  permitting 

1  A  characteristic  act  of  German  perfidy  toward  Argentine  is  worth  noting 
for  the  sidelight  it  throws  upon  the  conduct  of  German  agents  in  the  United 
States  before  we  entered  the  war. 

Argentine  was  neutral,  and  its  government  indeed  was  rather  pro-German ; 
but  the  people  were  growing  restive  because  of  the  repeated  sinking  of  Argen- 
tine ships  by  German  submarines.  Finally  the  German  ambassador  to  that 
country  sent  a  secret  dispatch  to  his  government,  advising  it  earnestly  not  to 
give  up  its  practice,  but  thereafter  when  it  sank  an  Argentine  vessel  to  make 
sure  that  no  trace  survived  of  ship  or  crew  ("spurlos  versenkt").  This  docu- 
ment was  secured  by  an  American  secret  agent.  The  German  government 
never  showed  regret  for  its  representative's  vile  suggestion  of  wholesale 
murder  of  citizens  of  a  power  to  which  he  was  daily  professing  friendship 
and  whose  guest  he  was. 


success  in 
1917 


66  THE   WAR  AND   THE   NEW  AGE 

or  preparing  breakdown  in  the  distribution  of  food.     March  11, 

the  populace  rose.     The  troops  joined  the  rioters,  and  the  rising 

quickly  became  a  political  revolution.     Absolutely  deserted  by 

The  Russian  all   classes,   Nicholas   abdicated   on   March   15.     The   Liberal 

5JJJ^  :    leaders  of  the  Duma  (Constitutional  Democrats  led  by  Miliukof ) 

visional  proclaimed    a   provisional   government,   which   was   promptly 

govern-  anfj  peacefunv  accepted  by  the  army  and  by  the  nation.     Op- 

Constitu-        timists  among  the  Allies  believed  that  Russia  had  merely  passed 

D°n     rats     from  an  inefficient  autocracy  to  a  sane  and  efficient  republic. 

Keener-eyed  thinkers  warned  (1)  that,  in  the  complete  collapse 

of  her  industrial  system,  Russia  would  almost  inevitably  be 

forced  into  the  hands  of  extremists ;  and   (2)   that  the  huge 

empire  would  probably  break  up  into  separate  and  possibly 

warring  states  —  which  in  the  past  had  had  no  real  bond  of 

union  except  the  perished  autocracy. 

The  Keren-       These  gloomy  surmises  proved  correct.     The  provisional  gov- 

sky  govern-    ernmen|-  0f  Miliukof  could  not  stand  the  strain  of  foreign  war 
ment  _  _  ° 

and  of  internal  dissolution,  and  in  a  few  weeks  (June,  1917)  it 

was  replaced  by  a  Socialist-democratic  government  led  by 
Kerensky.  This  interesting  man  was  an  emotional,  well-mean- 
ing enthusiast,  —  a  talker  rather  than  a  doer,  altogether  unfit 
to  grapple  with  the  tremendous  difficulties  before  Russia. 
Finland,  the  Ukrainian  districts,  and  Siberia  were  showing  signs 
of  breaking  away  from  central  Russia.  Everywhere  the 
peasants  had  begun  to  appropriate  the  lands  of  the  great  es- 
tates, sometimes  quietly,  sometimes  with  violence  and  outrage. 
The  army  was  completely  demoralized.  The  peasant  soldiers, 
so  often  betrayed  by  their  officers,  were  eager  for  peace,  that 
they  might  go  home  to  get  their  share  of  the  land.  In  all  large 
cities,  extreme  Socialists  began  to  win  support  for  a  further 
revolution,  and  in  some  places  anarchists  were  taking  the  lead. 
Kerensky  battled  against  these  conditions  faithfully,  and  for 
a  while  with  some  show  of  success.  He  tried  zealously  to  con- 
tinue the  war,  and,  in  July,  he  did  induce  part  of  the  demoralized 
army  to  take  up  the  offensive  once  more.  But  after  slight 
successes,   the  military  machine  collapsed.     Whole  regiments 


THE   FOURTH   YEAR,    1917  67 

and  brigades  mutinied,  murdered  their  despotic  officers,  broke 
up,  and  went  to  their  homes.     The  remaining  army  was  in- 
toxicated with  the  new  political  "  liberty,"  and  fraternized  with 
the  few  German  regiments  left  to  watch  it.     Russia  was  really 
"  out  of  the  war."     After  a  six-months   rule,  Kerensky  fled   The  Bol- 
from  the  extremists,  and  (November  7,  1917)   these  extreme   Revolution: 
Socialists    (the    Bolsheviki)    seized    the   government   and    an-  Russia  out 
nounced  their  determination  to  make  peace. 

During  the  chaos  under  Kerensky,  the  real  power  had 
fallen  over  nearly  all  Russia  to  new  councils  of  workmen's 
delegates  (with  representatives  also  from  the  army  and  the 
peasantry).  The  Bolsheviki  had  seen  that  these  "  Soviets," 
rather  than  the  old  agencies,  had  become  the  real  govern- 
ment, and  by  shrewd  political  campaigning  they  captured 
these  bodies,  so  securing  control  over  the  country. 

It  should  be  clearly  recognized,  however,  that  no  Russian 
government  could  have  continued  the  war.  The  Russian 
people  had  borne  greater  sacrifice  than  any  other;  they 
were  absolutely  without  resources ;  and  they  were  un- 
speakably weary  of  war. 

In  the  West,  the  Allies  had  begun  the  spring  campaigns  in  The  cam- 
high  hopes.     The  French  had  borne  the  heaviest  burden  so  far,   ^^J in 
but  they  were  ready  for  one  more  supreme  blow.     Their  new 
commander,    Nivelle,    however,    though    a    brilliant    general,   Nivelle's 
proved  erratic  and  unsafe,  and  his  great  offensive  on  the  Aisne   j^e  Aisne 
was  heavily  repulsed.     He  was  superseded  by  Petain,  the  hero 
of  Verdun ;  but  the  army  was  so  demoralized  and  discouraged 
that  it  could  undertake  no  further  important  operations  during 
the  season. 

Very  early  in  the  season  the  Germans  had  executed  an  ex-  The  Ger- 

tended   withdrawal   in  front  of   the   British   lines   from   their  !?*£„♦«,*;,. 

strategic 

trenches  of  two  years'  warfare  to  a  new  "  Hindenburg  Line,"  retreat "  to 

which,  they  boasted,  had  been  prepared  so  as  to  be  absolutely  *  e .     in~ 

impregnable  to  any  assault.     This  maneuver  confessed  a  su-  Line " 
periority  in  the  English  fighting  machine  —  which  the  Germans 


68        THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

had  hitherto  professed  to  despise  —  but  it  delayed  Haig's 
attack  for  some  weeks.  His  heavy  guns  had  to  be  brought  up 
to  the  new  positions  over  territory  rendered  almost  impassable 
by  the  Germans  in  their  retreat,  and  new  lines  of  communica- 
tion had  to  be  established.  These  things  were  accomplished, 
The  great       however,  with  a  rapidity  and  efficiency  wholly  surprising  to 

Bntish  ^e  German  High  Command ;  and  in  the  subsequent  British 

offensive  °  l 

attack  the  Germans  were  saved  only  by  the  fact  that  now  they 

were  able  to  transfer  all  their  best  divisions  from  the  Russian 

front  to  reinforce  their  troops  pressed  by  the  British.     Even  so, 

Haig  continued   to  win   important  successes   in  Picardy  and 

Flanders  from  April  to  November ;  but  the  blunder  by  Nivelle 

and  the  collapse  of  Russia  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  "  break 

through  "  to  stay. 

German  The   Russian    military   collapse   had    been    caused    in   part 

"  propa-  l^y    an    exceedingly    skillful    German    propaganda.     Russian 

successful  soldiers  had   been   taught  persistently  by  German  emissaries 

m  Russia,  tjia£  ^.jie  war  wag  t]ie  Tsar's  war,  or  at  least  a  capitalist  war ; 

now  tried  in  ... 

Italy  and  that  their  German  brothers  were  quite  ready  to  give  the 

new  Russia  a  fair  peace.  A  little  later  the  same  tactics  were 
repeated  successfully  against  Italy.  In  August  of  1917  the 
Italian  armies  seemed  for  a  while  to  have  overcome  the  tre- 
mendous natural  difficulties  confronting  them.  They  had 
won  important  battles  and  had  taken  key  positions  command- 
ing Trieste,  when  suddenly  their  military  machine,  too,  went 
almost  to  pieces.  The  Germans  had  been  using  with  the 
Italian  rank  and  file  a  skillful  propaganda.  England  and 
France,  the  Italian  soldiers  were  told,  were  looking  only  to 
their  own  selfish  ambitions,  and  were  leaving  Italy  an  unfair 
share  of  the  burden  of  the  war.  Peace  could  be  secured  at  any 
moment  if  only  Italy  would  cease  to  attack  Austrian  territory. 
Meanwhile  the  wives  and  children  of  Italian  soldiers  were  in 
truth  famishing  for  bread,  and  information  to  this  effect  — 
both  reliable  and  exaggerated  —  was  creeping  through  to  the 
ranks. 


THE   FOURTH  YEAR,    1917  69 

While  the  Italian  morale  was  so  honey-combed,  the  Austrians  The  Italian 
suddenly  took  the  offensive.  They  met  at  first  with  almost  collaPse 
no  resistance.  They  tore  a  huge  gap  in  the  Italian  lines,  took 
200,000  prisoners  and  a  great  part  of  Italy's  heavy  artillery, 
and  advanced  into  Venetia,  driving  the  remnants  of  the  Italian 
army  before  them  in  the  rout.  French  and  British  reinforce- 
ments were  hurried  in ;  and  the  Italians  rallied  when  they  saw 
how  they  had  been  tricked  and  how  their  country  had  been 
opened  to  invaders.  The  Teutons  proved  unable  to  force  the 
line  of  the  Piave  River ;  and  Venice  and  the  rich  Lombard  plain 
were  saved.  Italy  had  not  been  put  out  of  the  war  as  Russia 
had  been ;  but  for  the  next  six  months,  until  well  into  the 
next  year,  the  most  that  she  could  do,  even  with  the  help  of 
Allied  forces  sadly  needed  elsewhere,  was  to  hold  her  new  line 
while  she  built  up  again  her  broken  military  machine. 

The  brightest  phase  of  the  year's  struggle  for  the  Allies  was  The  U-boat 
at  the  point  where  there  had  seemed  the  greatest  peril.  Ger-  c^P^s11 
many's  new  submarine  warfare  had  indeed  destroyed  an  enor- 
mous shipping  tonnage,  and  for  a  few  months  had  really  promised 
to  make  good  the  threat  of  starving  England  into  surrender. 
But  the  English  navy  made  a  supreme  effort.  An  admirable 
convoy  system  was  organized  to  protect  important  merchant 
fleets ;  shipbuilding  was  speeded  up,  to  supply  the  place  of 
tonnage  sunk ;  submarine  chasers  and  patrol  boats  waged 
relentless,  daring,  and  successful  war  against  the  treacherous 
and  barbarous  craft  of  the  enemy.  America  sent  five  battle- 
ships to  reinforce  the  British  Grand  Fleet,  and  —  more  to  the 
purpose  —  a  much  more  considerable  addition  to  the  anti- 
submarine fleet;  and  newly  created  American  shipyards  had 
begun  to  launch  new  cargo  ships  in  ever  increasing  numbers, 
upon  a  scale  never  before  known  to  the  world.  The  Allies 
were  kept  supplied  with  food  and  other  necessaries  enough  to 
avert  any  supreme  calamity.  Before  September,  1917,  the 
menace  —  in  its  darkest  form  —  had  passed.  Submarines 
remained  a  source  of  loss  and  serious  annoyance ;  but  it  had 


70 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


America's 
man-power 
begins  to 
count 


become  plain  that  they  were  not  to  be  the  decisive  factor  in 
the  war. 

Moreover,  America  was  slowly  getting  into  the  struggle  — 
slowly,  and  yet  more  swiftly  than  either  friend  or  foe  had 
dreamed  possible.  The  general  expectation  had  been  that, 
totally  unprepared  as  the  United  States  was  for  war,  her  chief 
contribution  would  be  in  money,  ships,  and  supplies.  These 
she  gave  in  generous  measure  (Chapter  IX,  below).  But 
also,  from  the  first  the  government  wisely  planned  for  military 
participation  on  a  huge  scale.  Congress  was  induced  to  pass 
a  "selective  conscription  "  act;  and  as  early  as  June  a  small 
contingent  of  excellent  fighters  was  sent  to  France  —  mainly 
from  the  old  regular  army.  In  the  early  fall,  new  regiments 
were  transported  (some  300,000  before  Christmas),  and  per- 
haps half  a  million  more  were  in  training.  By  1920,  it  was 
then  thought  by  the  hopeful,  America  could  place  three  million 
men  in  the  field  in  Europe,  or  even  five  million,  and  so  decide 
the  war.  But  events  were  to  make  a  supreme  exertion  neces- 
sary even  sooner ;  and  America  was  to  meet  the  need. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   LAST   YEAR,    1918 

France  could  stand  one  more  year  of  war,  but  she  was  very  French  dis- 

nearly  "  bled  white,"  as  Germany  had  boasted.     Her  working  content  a.nd 

^  ^  °    war-wean- 

classes  were  war-weary  and  discouraged,  and  the  Germans  had   ness 

infected  all  classes  in  that  country  more  or  less  successfully 
with  their  poisonous  and  baseless  propaganda  to  the  effect 
that  England  was  using  France  to  fight  her  battles,  and  that 
she  herself  was  bearing  far  less  than  her  proper  share  of  the 
burden.  French  morale  was  in  danger  of  giving  way  somewhat  Peace  feel- 
as  Russian  and  Italian  had  given  way.  It  was  saved  by  two  }?f in  ng~ 
things  :  by  the  tremendous  energy  of  the  aged  Clemenceau  — 
"  The  Tiger  "  —  whom  the  crisis  had  called  from  his  retire- 
ment to  the  premiership ;  and  by  the  encouraging  appearance 
in  France,  none  too  soon,  of  American  soldiers  in  large  numbers. 

Even  in  England,  peace  talk  began  to  be  heard,  not  merely 
among  the  workers  but  here  and  there  in  all  ranks  of  society. 
And  among  the  laborers  this  dangerous  leaning  was  fearfully 
augmented  when  the  Russian  Bolsheviki  published  the  copies 
of  the  "  Secret  Treaties  "  between  England,  France,  Italy,  and 
the  Tsar's  government,  revealing  the  Allied  governments  as 
purchasing  one  another's  aid  by  promises  of  territorial  and 
commercial  spoils.  For  the  first  time  the  charge  against  the 
Allies  that  on  their  side  too  the  war  was  "  a  capitalist  war  " 
was  given  some  color  of  presumption. 

In  Germany,  too,  the  masses  of  the  people  were  war-weary.   Conditions 
The  entire  generation  of  their  young  men  was  threatened  with  in    ermany 
extinction,  and  their  children  were  being  pitifully  stunted  from 
lack  of  food.     The  Reichstag  actually  adopted  resolutions  in 
favor  of  peace  without  annexations    or   indemnities  —  which 
from  the  German  viewpoint  was  extremely  conciliatory.     But 

71 


72 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


A    race    be- 
tween   Ger- 
many and 
America 


Wilson's 
"  diplomatic 
offensive  " 


the  junkers  and  great  capitalists  were  still  bent  upon  complete 
military  victory,  which  they  seemed  to  see  within  their  grasp ; 
and  the  German  war  lords  at  once  made  it  plain  that  they  recog- 
nized no  binding  force  in  the  Reichstag  resolutions.  They 
had  knocked  out  Russia,  put  out  Italy  temporarily  at  least,  and 
might  now  turn  all  their  strength  as  never  before  upon  France 
and  England.  They  were  confident  that  they  could  win  the 
war  before  American  armies  could  become  an  important  factor. 
The  Allies,  they  insisted,  had  not  shipping  enough  to  bring  the 
Americans  in  any  numbers ;  still  less  to  bring  the  supplies 
needful  for  them ;  and  then  the  Americans  "  couldn't  fight  " 
anyway  without  years  of  training. 

Thus  in  1918  the  war  became  a  race  between  Germany  and 
America.  Could  America  put  decisive  numbers  in  action  on 
the  West  front  before  Germany  could  deliver  a  knock-out  blow  ? 
While  winter  held  the  German  armies  inactive,  the  British  and 
American  navies  carried  each  week  thousands  of  American 
soldiers  toward  the  front,  English  ships  carrying  much  the 
greater  number. 

And  during  these  same  months  America  and  England  won  a 
supremely  important  victory  in  the  moral  field.  In  the  sum- 
mer of  1917  the  Pope  had  suggested  peace  negotiation  on  the 
basis  of  July,  1914  —  before  the  war  began.  Woodrow  Wilson 
at  once  answered,  for  America  and  for  the  Allies,  that  there 
could  be  no  safe  peace  with  the  faithless  Hohenzollern  govern- 
ment. This  cleared  the  air,  and  made  plain  at  least  one  of 
the  "  guarantees  "  the  Allies  must  secure.  Then  Germany 
tried  another  maneuver :  she  put  forward  Austria  to  suggest 
peace  negotiations  —  in  hope,  no  doubt,  of  weakening  the 
Allied  morale.  Instead,  in  two  great  speeches,  Lloyd-George 
and  President  Wilson  stated  the  war  aims  of  the  Allies  with  a 
studious  moderation  which  conciliated  wavering  elements  in 
their  own  countries,  and  at  the  same  time  with  a  keen  logic 
that  put  Germany  in  the  wrong  even  more  clearly  than  before 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  Lloyd-George  (January  6)  demanded 
complete  reparation  for  Belgium,  but  disclaimed  intention  to 


THE   LAST  YEAR,    1918  73 

exact  indemnities  other  than  payment  for  injuries  done  by 
Germany  in  defiance  of  international  law.  President  Wilson's 
address  contained  his  famous  Fourteen  Points,  of  which  fuller 
mention  will  be  made  later.  These  statements  of  America  and 
England  began  effectively  to  drive  a  wedge  between  the  Ger- 
man government  and  the  German  people,  by  convincing  the 
masses  that  the  Allies  were  warring  only  for  freedom  and  for 
peace,  and  not  for  the  destruction  of  Germany. 

And  now  Germany  herself  made  plain  how  absolutely  right  The  Brest- 
the  Allies  were  in  their  contention  that  the  Hohenzollerns  could  ^^L 
be  trusted  to  keep  no  promises.  March  3,  1918,  the  German 
militarists,  with  the  grossest  of  bad  faith,  shamelessly  broke 
their  many  pledges  to  the  helpless  Bolsheviki  and  forced  upon 
Russia  the  "Peace  of  Brest-Li  to  vsk."  By  that  dictated  treaty, 
Germany  virtually  became  overlord  to  a  broad  belt  of  vassal 
states  taken  from  Russia  —  Finland,  the  Baltic  Provinces, 
Lithuania,  Poland,  Ukrainia  —  and  even  the  remaining  "  Great 
Russia  "  had  to  agree  to  German  control  of  her  industrial  re- 
organization. When  the  German  perfidy  had  revealed  itself 
suddenly,  after  long  and  deceitful  negotiations,  the  angered 
and  betrayed  Bolsheviki  wished  to  break  off,  and  renew  the 
war.  They  were  absolutely  helpless,  however,  without  prompt 
Allied  aid  upon  a  large  scale.  This  aid  they  asked  for,  but 
urgent  cablegrams  brought  no  answer.  The  Allies  apparently 
had  been  so  repelled  by  the  Bolshevist  industrial  and  political 
policy  that  they  were  unwilling  to  deal  with  that  government, 
and  preferred  to  leave  Russia  to  its  fate  —  and  to  the  Germans. 

At  that  moment  the  result  was  disastrous.  Murmurs  in 
Germany  against  the  war  were  stilled  by  the  immediate  prospect 
of  an  empire  stretching  from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Pacific,  and 
of  large  accumulated  stores  of  Russian  wheat  —  as  soon  as 
transportation  systems  could  be  restored  to  efficiency. 

In  all  the  Allied  countries  tremendous  popular  feeling  was 
aroused  against  the  Bolsheviki  government.  In  part  this 
was  because  the  people  —  ignorant  of  the  facts  just  men- 


74 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


tioned  —  believed  that  government  a  mere  tool  of  Germany. 
In  part  it  was  due  to  hatred  and  fear  among  propertied  classes 
toward  any  Socialist  regime.  But  more  than  all  else,  it 
was  due  to  a  false  position  adopted  by  the  Bolsheviki  in 
government.  They  excluded  all  people  living  on  their 
capital  from  political  life. 

This  of  course  was  not  a  democracy :  it  was  a  class 
rule.  True,  in  Russia  it  was  the  rule  of  more  than  ninety 
per  cent  of  the  whole  population ;  but  the  example  of  a 
"proletarian  dictatorship"  was  dreaded  by  the  "  upper  "  and 
"middle"  classes  everywhere.  Moreover,  the  Bolsheviki 
announced  a  repudiation  of  the  Russian  national  debt.1  The 
Russian  bonds  were  owned  mainly  in  France;  and  that 
country  persuaded  the  Allies  to  treat  the  Russian  govern- 
ment as  an  enemy.  Soon,  too,  various  reactionary  and 
middle-class  movements  against  the  Bolsheviki  tyranny 
found  leaders  for  a  vigorous  civil  war. 


The  great 
German 
offensive 
in  Picardy 
in  March 


Naturally  the  Germans  opened  the  campaign  in  the  West  at 
the  earliest  moment  possible.  They  had  now  a  vast  superiority 
both  in  men  and  in  heavy  guns  there.  March  21  they  attacked 
the  British  lines  in  Picardy  with  overwhelming  forces.  After 
five  days  of  terrific  fighting  the  British  were  hurled  out  of  their 
trench  lines  and  driven  back  with  frightful  losses  nearly  to 
Amiens,  leaving  a  broad  and  dangerous  gap  between  them  and 
the  French.  It  looked  as  though  the  Germans  might  drive 
the  British  into  the  sea,  or  the  French  back  upon  Paris,  or  both. 
But,  as  so  often  in  their  great  offensives  in  this  war,  the  Ger- 
mans had  exhausted  themselves  in  their  mass  attack ;  and 
while  they  paused  a  French  force  threw  itself  into  the  gap,  and 
British  reserves  reinforced  the  shattered  front  lines.  For  the 
first  time  since  the  First  Battle  of  the  Marne,  the  Germans  had 
forced  the  fighting  into  the  open,  where  they  had  always  claimed 


1  The  Bolsheviki  afterward  offered  to  give  up  this  policy  if  accorded  recog- 
nition. Read  William  Hard's  articles  on  "  Bolshevist  Russia  "  in  the  Metro- 
politan (June-October,  1919)  —  based  on  the  account  by  Raymond  Robins. 


THE   LAST   YEAR,    1918  75 

marked  superiority ;  but  they  were  unable  to  follow  up  their 
success  decisively. 

In  April  they  struck  again  farther  north,  in  Flanders,  and   The  offen- 
again  they  seemed  almost  to  have  overwhelmed  the  British ;  Fjan(jers 
but  fighting  desperately,  "  with  our  backs  to  the  wall  "  as  Haig  in  April 
phrased  it  in  his  solemn  order  to  his  dying  army,  and  rein- 
forced by  some  French  divisions,  the  British  kept  their  front 
unbroken,  bent  and  thinned  though  it  was. 

The  Germans  took  another  month  for  preparation,  and  then   The  offen- 
struck  fiercely  in  a  general  attack  on  the  French  lines  north  of  Ahmg0-^  th! 
the  Aisne.     Apparently  the  French  were  taken  by  surprise,   last  of  May 
The  Germans  broke  through,  for  the  moment,  on  an  eighteen- 
mile  front,  and  once  more  reached  the  Marne.     Here,  however, 
they  were  halted,  largely  by  American   troops,   at   Chateau- 
Thierry.     Then,  while  the  Americans  made  splendid   counter- 
attacks, as  at  Belleau  Wood   (renamed,  for  them,  "  Wood  of   Checked  by 
the  Marines  "),  the  French  lines  were  reformed,  so  that  still   at  chateau- 
the  Allies  presented   a    continuous   front,  irregular  though  it  Thierry 
was  with  dangerous  salients  and  wedges.     At  almost  the  same 
time,   Austria,  forced  into  action  again  in  Italy  by  German 
insistence,  was  repulsed  in  a  general  attack  on  the  Piave. 

Time  was  fighting  for  the  Allies.     The  disasters  of  the  early  Time  given 
spring,  the  suggestion  of  the  American  commander,  General    Americans 
Pershing,  and  the  imperative  demand  of  Clemenceau,  at  last  in-   to  arrive 
duced  them  to  take  the  wise  step  of  appointing  a  generalissimo. 
This  position  was  given  to  Ferdinand  Foch,  mentioned  above 
in  the  story  of  the  First  Marne.     For  the  rest  of  the  struggle, 
the  Allied  forces  were  directed  with  a  unity  and  skill  that  had 
been  impossible  under  divided  commands,  even  with  the  heartiest 
desire  to  cooperate. 

And  now,  too,  America  really  had  an  army  in  France.  Before 
the  end  of  June,  her  effective  soldiers  there  numbered  1,250,000. 
Each  month  afterward  brought  at  least  300,000  more.  By 
September  the  number  exceeded  two  million. 

The  Germans  could  not  again  take  up  the  offensive  for  five 
weeks  (June  11-July  15),  and  in  this  interval  the  balance  of 


76 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


The  last 
German 
offensive 


available  man-power  seems  to  have  turned  against  them. 
Hindenburg  and  Ludendorf  (chief  of  staff,  supreme  for  long 
past  in  German  military  councils)  believed  only  in  mass  attacks 
over  wide  fronts.     When  one  of  these  gigantic  onsets  had  once 


Arrtiens    Peronne0  fVt.Quentin 
x    rtMontdidior  / 

NNoyun     > 


^J^^p^K     Mars  la  Touri    /••;>.     fetz% 


Line  of  July  15  191S 

"      "  iVov.  10    " 


The  Gehman  Lines  on  July  15  and  on  November  10. 

been  stopped,  with  its  tremendous  losses  and  demoralization, 
a  considerable  interval  had  to  elapse  before  another  could  begin. 
July  15,  preparations  were  complete,  and  the  Germans  attacked 
again  in  great  force  along  the  Marne,  expecting  this  time  to 
reach  positions  that  would   command  Paris.     But  the  onset 


THE   LAST   YEAR,    1918  77 

broke  against  a  stone-wall  resistance  of  French  and  American 
troops.  For  the  first  time  in  the  war,  a  carefully  prepared  offen- 
sive failed  to  gain  ground. 

The  German  failure  was  plain  by  the  17th.     On  the  18th,   Foch's  con- 
before  the  Germans  could  withdraw  or  reorganize,  Foch  beqan   *inu?us  of~ 

°  "         tensive 

his  great  offensive,  by  counter-attacking  upon  the  exposed  western 
flank  of  the  invaders.  This  move  took  the  Germans  completely 
by  surprise.  Their  front  all  but  collapsed  along  a  critical  line 
of  twenty-eight  miles.  Foch  allowed  them  no  hour  of  rest.  Un- 
like his  opponents,  he  did  not  attempt  gigantic  attacks,  to 
break  through  at  some  one  point.  Instead,  he  kept  up  a  con- 
tinuous offensive,  threatening  every  part  of  the  enemy's  front, 
but  striking  now  here,  now  there,  on  one  exposed  flank  and  then 
on  another,  always  ready  at  a  moment  to  take  advantage  of  a 
new  opening,  and  giving  the  Germans  no  chance  to  withdraw 
their  forces  without  imperiling  key  positions.  That  is,  he  kept 
the  ball  in  his  own  hands ;  and  though  his  forces  perhaps  were 
still  inferior  in  numbers  to  the  Germans,  he  took  no  intervals 
for  rest  —  which  would  have  allowed  the  enemy  to  attempt  a 
new  offensive. 

By  the  end  of  July  the  invaders  had  been  pushed  out  of  the  The  German 
ground  they  had  gained  in  May  and  June,  between  the  Aisne  retreat 
and  the  Marne.  Then  the  British,  reorganized  now,  were 
brought  again  into  action  in  Picardy,  taking  the  burden  of  the 
offensive,  while  the  French  kept  up  activity  enough  to  prevent 
any  transfer  of  reinforcements  to  that  district  from  the  sector 
opposite  them.  For  some  weeks,  the  Americans,  steadily  grow- 
ing in  numbers  and  equipment,  were  held  in  reserve  for  the  most 
part  —  after  their  gallant  fighting  in  stopping  the  last  German 
offensive  —  but  before  the  end  of  August  the  British  and  French 
had  won  back  all  the  ground  lost  in  the  German  offensives  of 
the  spring. 

The  Germans  had  made  their  last  throw  —  and  lost.     Foch's   The  Ameri- 
pressure    never    relaxed.     In    September    American    divisions  ^s** 
began  an  offensive  on  a  third  part  of  the  front,  culminating  in  a 
drive  toward  Sedan,  to  cut  one  of  the  two  main  railways  that 


78 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


Germany 
asks  for  an 
armistice 


supplied  the  German  front,  and  at  the  same  time  the  British 
were  wrenching  great  sections  of  the  "  Hindenburg  Line  "  from 
the  foe.  In  the  opening  days  of  October  the  German  commanders 
reported  to  Berlin  that  the  war  was  lost,  and  that  it  was  necessary 
to  try  to  get  peace  by  negotiation.  For  the  next  month,  while 
there  went  on  an  exchange  of  notes  regarding  an  armistice,  the 
German  military  situation  grew  steadily  more  critical. 


Bulgaria 
had  already 
fallen 


And  Turkey 


At  the  same  time,  it  is  true  that  Germany  lasted  longer  than 
any  of  her  allies  and  that  her  collapse  was  determined  largely 
by  events  in  the  East.  In  September,  the  Allied  force,  so  long 
held  inactive  at  Salonika,  suddenly  took  the  offensive,  crushing 
the  Bulgarians  in  a  great  battle  on  the  Vardar.  Political 
changes  had  made  this  move  possible.  In  1917,  now  that  the 
Tsar  could  no  longer  interfere,  the  English  and  French  had 
deposed  and  banished  King  Constantine  of  Greece ;  and  Veni- 
zelos,  the  new  head  of  the  Greek  state,  was  warmly  committed 
to  the  Allied  cause.  Moreover,  the  Bulgarians  were  war- 
weary  and  demoralized.  They  had  failed  to  get  from  Germany 
and  Austria  the  spoils  they  hoped  at  the  fall  of  Roumania ; 
and  now  after  their  one  great  defeat  they  had  neither  spirit 
nor  forces  to  continue  the  struggle.  Foch's  pressure  made  it 
impossible  for  the  Germans  to  transfer  reinforcements  to  them 
from  the  West.  The  Salonika  forces  advanced  swiftly  into 
Bulgaria.  Tsar  Ferdinand  abdicated,  and  (September  30)  the 
Provisional  Bulgarian  government  signed  an  armistice  amount- 
ing to  unconditional  surrender  and  opening  also  the  way  for  an 
attack  upon  Austria  from  the  south. 

And  while  these  events  were  happening,  a  wholly  independent 
series  of  movements  were  putting  Turkey  out  of  the  war.  In 
the  spring  of  1917  an  English  force  from  India  worked  its  way 
up  the  Tigris  and  took  Bagdad  —  after  a  romantic  campaign 
that  recalls  the  wars  and  marches  of  Alexander  the  Great  in  the 
Orient  —  and  in  the  fall  of  the  same  year,  another  British  force 
from  Egypt  took  Jerusalem.  But  the  Russian  collapse  en- 
dangered both  these  promising  movements,  and  the  pressure 


THE   LAST   YEAR,    1918  79 

of  the  Germans  on  the  West  front  made  it  unsafe  for  England 
then  to  send  more  men  to  either  of  these  important  Eastern 
districts.  But  by  midsummer  of  1918,  reinforcements  were 
sent  at  last  to  Palestine ;  and  September  19,  the  British  re- 
sumed a  remarkable  campaign  north  of  Jerusalem.  The  Turks 
were  utterly  routed  in  a  decisive  battle,  and  the  pursuit  was  so 
hot  and  so  continuous  that  they  never  rallied  in  any  force. 
Aleppo,  the  key  to  Northern  Syria,  surrendered  October  26, 
without  a  blow,  —  and  with  it  fell  the  Ottoman  Empire  outside 
Asia  Minor.  The  Turks  saw  that  the  collapse  of  Bulgaria  had 
isolated  them  from  any  possible  German  succor  —  and  in  any 
case  Germany  was  no  more  able  to  spare  troops  now  for  them 
than  a  month  before  for  Bulgaria.  The  Turkish  government 
at  Constantinople  fled.  A  new  one  was  hastily  constituted; 
and,  October  30,  Turkey  surrendered  as  abjectly  as  Bulgaria. 
The  Dardanelles  were  opened,  and  Constantinople  admitted 
an  Allied  garrison. 

Austria  too  had  dissolved.  After  the  June  repulse  on  the  And  Austria 
Piave,  the  Austrian  army  was  never  fit  for  another  offensive. 
At  home  the  conglomerate  state  was  going  to  pieces.  Bohemia 
on  one  side,  and  Slovenes,  Croats,  and  Bosnians  on  the  other, 
were  organizing  independent  governments  —  with  encourage- 
ment from  America  and  the  Allies.  Then,  October  24,  Italy 
struck  on  the  Piave.  The  Austrian  army  broke  in  rout.  Austria 
called  frantically  for  an  armistice,  and  when  one  was  granted 
(November  4)  the  ancient  Hapsburg  Empire  had  vanished. 
The  Emperor  Karl  (recent  successor  to  the  old  Francis  Joseph) 
abdicated.  Fugitive  archdukes  and  duchesses  crowded  Swiss 
hotels.  And  each  day  or  two  saw  a  new  revolutionary  republic 
set  up  in  some  part  of  the  former  Hapsburg  realms. 

Germany  had  begun  to  treat  for  surrender  a  month  earlier,   The  Allies 

but  held  out  a  week  longer.     October  5,  the  German  Chan-  refuse  *° 

treat  with 
celor  (now  Prince  Max  of  Baden)  had  asked  President  Wilson  the  German 

to  arrange  an  armistice,  offering  to  accept  his  "  fourteen  points  "   autocracy 

as  a  basis  for  peace.     Wilson's  replies  to  this  and  to  a  following 

communication  made  it  plain  that  America  and  the  Allies  would 


80 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


German 
revolution 


The  ar- 
mistice, 
Novem- 
ber 11 


not  treat  with  the  old  despotic  government,  and  that  no  ar- 
mistice would  be  granted  at  that  late  moment  which  did  not 
secure  to  the  Allies  fully  the  fruits  of  their  military  advantages 
in  the  field.  Meantime  the  fighting  went  on,  with  terrific  losses 
on  both  sides,  but  with  daily  increase  in  the  military  superiority 
of  the  Allies.  The  Americans,  pushing  north  in  the  Argonne 
and  across  the  Meuse,  were  threatening  the  trunk  railway  at 
Sedan,  the  only  road  open  for  German  retreat  except  the  one 
through  Belgium.  The  British  and  Belgians  pushed  the  dis- 
couraged invaders  out  of  northern  France  and  out  of  a  large 
part  of  Belgium.  The  pursuit  at  every  point  was  so  hot  that 
retreat  had  to  be  foot  by  foot,  or  in  complete  rout ;  and  it  was 
not  clear  that  even  that  choice  would  long  remain.  More- 
over, the  fleet  at  Kiel  was  in  mutiny,  and  the  Extreme  Social- 
ists —  all  along  opposed  to  the  war  —  were  openly  preparing 
revolution. 

Not  till  late  in  October  did  the  War  Council  of  the  Allies 
make  known  to  Germany  the  terms  upon  which  she  could  have 
an  armistice  preliminary  to  the  drafting  of  a  peace  treaty.  By 
those  terms  Germany  could  save  her  army  from  destruction, 
and  her  territory  would  not  suffer  hostile  conquest.  But  she 
was  to  surrender  at  once  Alsace-Lorraine,  and  to  withdraw  her 
troops  everywhere  across  the  Rhine,  leaving  the  Allies  in  pos- 
session of  a  broad  belt  of  German  territory.  She  was  also  to 
surrender  practically  all  her  fleet,  most  of  her  heavy  artillery, 
her  aircraft,  and  her  railway  engines.  Likewise  she  was  at 
once  to  release  all  prisoners,  though  her  own  were  to  remain  in 
the  hands  of  the  Allies.  In  March,  Germany  had  treacherously 
and  arrogantly  set  her  foot  upon  the  neck  of  prostrate  Russia 
in  the  Brest-Litovsk  treaty:  November  11,  she  made  this  un- 
conditional surrender  to  whatever  further  conditions  the  Allies 
might  impose  in  the  final  settlement  —  though  the  Allies  did 
pledge  themselves  to  base  their  terms,  with  certain  reservations, 
upon  Mr.  Wilson's  Fourteen  Points. 

Germany  had  already  collapsed  internally.  November  7, 
Bavaria  deposed  her  king  and  proclaimed  herself  a  republic. 


THE   LAST  YEAR,    1918  81 

State  after  state  followed.  In  Berlin  the  moderate  Socialists  German 
seized  the  government  —  with  the  support  of  the  aristocracy  completed 
—  against  the  efforts  of  a  more  radical  Socialist  element, 
who  were  striving  to  accomplish  a  further  revolution.  No- 
vember 9,  deserted  by  the  army,  the  Kaiser  had  fled  to 
Holland,  whence  he  soon  sent  back  to  Germany  his  formal 
abdication.  German  autocracy  and  Prussian  militarism  had 
fallen  forever. 


CHAPTER   X 

WAR   EFFICIENCY    OF   A   DEMOCRACY 

No  other  war  was  ever  so  enormously  destructive,  but  neither 
did  any  other  war  ever  give  birth  to  so  many  healing  and  con- 
structive forces.  These  forces  we  can  most  easily  notice  in  our 
own  land,  but  it  should  be  kept  in  mind  that  they  were  found 
also  in  other  countries,  especially  in  England  and  France  — 
in  some  respects,  too,  in  more  advanced  forms  even  than  in 
America. 

For  this  study  there  are  two  phases,  more  or  less  inter- 
twined :  (1)  that  phase  which  had  to  do  mainly  with  greater 
efficiency  in  the  war  itself;  and  (2)  that  other  phase  winch 
looked  to  a  better  and  finer  world  after  the  war.  The  first 
phase  is  the  theme  of  this  chapter. 
America's  To  our  own  surprise,  and  to  that  of  the  world,  we  proved  that 

American  democracy,  utterly  unready  for  war  as  it  was,  could 
organize  for  war,  by  voluntary  cooperation,  more  efficiently  and 
swiftly  than  any  autocracy  had  ever  done.  Said  President 
Wilson  at  the  beginning  —  "  It  is  not  an  army  we  must  shape 
and  train ;  it  is  a  nation.  .  .  .  The  whole  nation  must  be  a 
team  in  which  each  man  shall  play  the  part  for  which  he  is  best 
fitted."  The  task  was  not  merely  to  select  and  train  three 
million  soldiers,  but  to  mobilize  one  hundred  million  people,  so 
that  every  ability  and  every  resource  could  be  utilized  with  the 
utmost  intelligence  and  harmony.  After  all,  battles  in  modern 
war  are  won  mainly  behind  the  lines.  The  most  important 
mobilization  was  mobilizing  our  civilian  population  to  produce 
and  transport  munitions  and  supplies,  to  raise  food,  supply  fuel, 
and  furnish  abundant  funds. 

At  once  the  government  put  skilled  brains  at  work:  (1)  to 
find  out  just  what  was  needed  in  all  these  respects,  and  in  what 

82 


task 


WAR  EFFICIENCY   OF  A   DEMOCRACY  83 

order,  so  as  to  be  able  to  distribute  effort  wisely ;  (2)  to  find  Fitting  each 
which  men  were  best  fitted  for  each  job  — -  often  by  systems  of  ™£n  °  s 
tests  in  the  hands  of  educational  experts ;  (3)  to  teach  the 
nation,  careless  and  wasteful  by  previous  training,  that  to  save 
food,  clothing,  and  other  supplies  was  just  as  useful  and  just  as 
patriotic  as  to  produce  them  ;  and  (4)  first  of  all,  to  educate  the 
whole  people  as  to  what  the  war  really  meant  and  as  to  the  best 
ways  of  cooperating  in  all  these  ways  to  win  it. 

The  great  Committee  on  Public  Information  at  Washington,   The  Com- 
created  by  President  Wilson,  was  a  new  thing  in  human  history.   Sr|^  °°_ 
If  a  democracy  was  to  turn  away  from  all  its  ordinary  ways  of  formation: 
living  in  order  to  fight,  it  must  be  thoroughly  posted  on  the     ™TCanda 
danger  that  threatened  it,  and  on  the  needs  of  the  hour.     Within 
a  few  months  this  Committee,  at  small  expense,  had  published 
and  circulated  in  every  village  in  America  more  than  a  hundred 
different  pamphlets,  brief,  readable,  forceful,  written  by  lead- 
ing American  scholars,  and  distributed  literally  by  the  million. 
These  publications  did  a  marvelous  work  in  spreading  informa- 
tion and  arousing  will  power  among  the  people,  demonstrating 
that  in  war  itself  "the  pen  is  mightier  than  the  sword."     Most 
of  these  studies  are  of  permanent  scholarly  value,  and  some  of 
them  are  referred  to  in  footnotes  and  book  lists  in  this  volume. 

With  this  Committee  originated  also  the  admirable  organ-  The  Four- 
ization  of  Four-Minute  Men,  —  some  5000  volunteer  speakers  ^l°ute 
to  explain  the  causes  and  needs  of  the  war  in  their  respective 
communities  to  audiences  gathered  at  the  movies  and  at  other 
entertainments.  Speakers  and  occasions  were  matters  of  local 
arrangement ;  but  the  central  Committee  put  the  plan  in  opera- 
tion and  made  it  effective  by  sending  to  all  the  thousands  of 
local  centers  at  frequent  intervals  suggestions  and  information 
on  which  to  base  the  speeches. 

The  same  Committee  secured  the  chief  of  America's  illus-  War  posters 
trators,  with  a  strong  staff  of  volunteer  assistants,  to  design 
posters  and  placards,  —  which  were  plentifully  distributed  in 
every  city  and  village  in  the  land  to  arouse  more  determination 
to  save  food  and  to  save  money  to  be  loaned  to  the  government. 


84 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


It  is  impossible  to  explain  here  the  many  other  activities 
of  the  Committee  —  such  as  the  cultivation  of  friendly  feeling 
in  South  American  lands,  the  uncovering  of  German  plots,  the 
driving  of  a  wedge  between  the  German  people  and  its  govern- 
ment by  shooting  propaganda  into  Germany.  And  this  Com- 
mittee is  only  one  instance  out  of  many  of  the  work  of  eminent 
American  chemists,  historians,  engineers,  heads  of  great  business 
enterprises,  who  served  at  Washington  during  the  war  as  vol- 
unteers with  at  best  only  a  nominal  money  compensation,  and 
often  as  "  one  dollar  a  year  "  men. 


Raising 
funds  for 
war 


Liberty 
Bonds 


The  United  States  formed  no  "  alliance  "  by  treaty  with  any 
of  the  Allies,  but  it  recognized  that  they  and  we  were  "  as- 
sociated "  as  co-workers,  and  that  we  must  give  them  every 
possible  aid.  At  first,  as  has  been  said  (p.  70),  the  Allies  looked 
to  us  mainly  for  money,  raw  materials,  and  food. 

Money  we  furnished  freely.  To  England,  France,  Italy,  and 
Belgium  (and  to  Russia  before  her  collapse)  we  loaned  nearly 
ten  billions  of  dollars,  most  of  which,  it  is  true,  was  used  by  those 
governments  in  purchasing  supplies  in  America.  W7ithin  a  few 
months  after  the  war  began,  the  special  session  of  Congress  in 
the  spring  and  summer  of  1917  appropriated  the  unparalleled  sum 
of  twenty-two  billions  of  dollars  for  war  purposes.  Five  billions 
of  this  was  loaned  to  the  government  at  once  by  citizens  of  all 
classes  in  the  purchase  of  the  first  and  second  issue  of  Liberty 
Bonds  (August  and  October,  1917).  These  bonds  were  sold 
mostly  in  small  denominations,  down  to  $50,  and  were  taken 
largely  by  people  of  small  means.  During  this  first  season  one 
out  of  every  ten  people  in  the  United  States  (children  and  all) 
became  a  bond-holder  by  so  loaning  to  the  government.  During 
the  next  year  and  a  half,  by  three  more  bond  issues,  the  govern- 
ment borrowed  of  our  people,  including  the  earlier  issues,  seven- 
teen billions.  (For  the  fourth  issue  alone,  the  largest  loan,  there 
were  twenty-one  million  subscribers,  or  one  of  every  five  inhab- 
itants.) Besides  all  this,  vast  sums  were  loaned  to  the  govern- 
ment in  even  smaller  amounts,  by  the  purchase  of  Thrift  Stamps 


WAR  EFFICIENCY   OF  A   DEMOCRACY  85 

(25  cents  each)  and  War  Savings  Stamps  ($5),  —  an  effective 
way  of  encouraging  small  savings. 

The  amazing  success  of  these  loans  —  which  for  the  most 
part  were  heavily  oversubscribed  —  is  the  more  marked  be- 
cause the  interest  was  low  and  because  money  at  that  time  could 
earn  much  higher  return  in  many  other  ways. 

But  we  had  to  raise  money  also  by  taxation.  The  first  War  War  taxes 
Revenue  bill  provided  for  direct  taxes  to  raise  two  and  a  half 
billions  a  year,  and  a  subsequent  bill  increased  the  amount  to 
more  than  four  billions  a  year.  Half  of  this  came  from  a 
graduated  income  tax  and  allied  taxes  (an  inheritance  tax,  and 
an  "  excess  profits  "  tax).  The  income  tax  took  2  per  cent  of 
a  small  income  x  and  rose  by  steep  degrees  to  65  per  cent  of  very 
large  incomes.  Moreover,  large  amounts  were  raised  by  a 
"  luxury  tax,"  payable  on  a  great  variety  of  articles  of  clothing 
costing  more  than  a  certain  price.  In  general,  a  serious  effort 
was  made  by  America  to  arrange  the  system  of  taxes  so  that 
for  the  first  time  in  the  world,  the  cost  of  war  should  not  fall 
mainly  on  the  working  classes. 

England   needed   our  cotton   and   wheat,   and   France   and   saving  food 
Italy  could  not  fight  longer  without  our  iron  and  coal  as  well.   a°d  "  d°jns 
These  things  we  strove  to  send.     But  all   the  Allies,  stripped  of  feed  our 
their  own  farm  workers,  needed  American  food  ;    and  our  poor  Allies 
harvest  in  1917  left  us  no  surplus  above  our  ordinary  consumption. 

This  was  an  alarming  condition.  To  meet  it,  Congress  gave 
the  President  extraordinary  powers  over  the  nation's  resources. 
The  President  created  a  Food  Commission,  headed  by  Herbert  C. 
Hoover,  an  American  business  man  and  engineer,  who  for  the 
three  years  preceding  had  shown  signal  administrative  ability 
and  devotion  to  humanity  as  head  of  the  American  Relief  Com- 
mission in  starving  Belgium.  (When  we  entered  the  war, 
Mr.  Hoover  and  his  American  associates  in  Belgium  had  been 
obliged  to  return  to  the  United  States.) 


■Each    taxpayer  was   allowed    $1000    income    exempt    from   taxation; 
husband  and  wife,  $2000  ;  and  $200  more  was  exempt  for  each  minor  child. 


86 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


War  prof- 
iteering 
largely  held 
in  check 


This  Commission,  by  spreading  information  broadcast  and 
by  skillful  appeals  kept  everywhere  before  the  eye,  induced  the 
American  people  voluntarily  and  cheerfully  to  limit  its  con- 
sumption, and  especially  to  "  save  the  waste."  Wheatless  and 
meatless  days  each  week,  agreed  upon  according  to  the  Com- 
mission's "  request  "  and  enforced  by  public  opinion,  and  a 
rigid  limit  on  the  amount  of  sugar  allowed  to  any  locality,  made 
it  possible  for  our  government  to  export  huge  amounts  of  these 
three  most  essential  foods  for  the  peoples  whose  armies  were 
righting  our  battles  in  Europe. 

By  saving  waste,  and  by  using  substitutes,  we  cut  down  our 
use  of  wheat  for  one  year  almost  half ;  and  the  half  so  saved 
gave  to  every  person  in  England,  France,  and  Italy  almost  as 
much  as  we  used  at  home.  We  had  less  than  20  millions  of 
bushels  to  export  in  1917,  if  we  used  as  much  as  usual  at  home ; 
but,  by  doing  without,  we  did  export  141  million  bushels. 

To  prevent  this  European  demand  from  raising  prices 
exorbitantly,  and  to  check  speculation  in  foodstuffs,  the  Com- 
mission took  important  steps  in  fixing  fair  prices  and  in  regulat- 
ing profits.  This  last,  it  must  be  said,  was  not  wholly  success- 
ful. Congress  had  not  given  the  President  power  enough, 
vast  as  was  his  power.  The  price  of  wheat  flour  was  fixed  ; 
but  many  millers  took  advantage  of  the  patriotic  determination 
of  the  country  to  use  cheaper  grain,  like  rye  flour  and  oatmeal, 
by  raising  the  prices  of  these  flours  exorbitantly.  This  was  one 
instance  of  disgraceful  "profiteering."  There  were  others; 
and  the  government  did  not  prove  strong  enough  successfully 
to  prosecute  and  punish  any  big  profiteer.  Still,  on  the  whole, 
the  record  of  the  "  big-money  "  interests  in  the  war  was  ex- 
tremely creditable  (although  we  did  have  17,000  more  million- 
aires when  the  war  closed  than  when  we  began). 


War  saving  The  above  statement  regarding  the  savings  brought  about 

a  demo-  among  the  people  by  voluntary  consent  is  by  no  means  com- 

untary  plcte.     The    woman's    committees    of    the    Defense    Councils 

movement  issued  cook  books  to  show  the  housewife  how  to  save  and  how 


WAR   EFFICIENCY   OF  A   DEMOCRACY  87 

to  use  what  had  previously  gone  to  the  garbage  can.  In  1918, 
on  the  advice  of  the  National  Commercial  Economy  Board, 
manufacturers  of  clothing  put  forth  fewer  and  simpler  styles, 
omitting  all  needless  buttons,  frills,  belts,  collars,  and  so  on. 
This  alone  saved  millions  of  yards  of  cloth  —  fifteen  per  cent, 
it  is  estimated,  of  the  cloth  usually  needed  for  men's  clothing, 
and  twenty-five  per  cent  for  women's. 

Along  with  this  saving,  went  also,  of  course,  work  for  in- 
creased production.  Farmers  increased  their  acreage  for  the 
most  needed  crops,  receiving  from  State  or  Nation  necessary 
advances  in  money  for  seed  or  machinery.  Needed  farm  labor 
was  furnished  by  volunteer  school  boys  —  who  were  allowed 
school  credits  for  the  time  so  spent.  And  a  vast  amount  of 
food  was  raised  in  new  "  war  gardens  "  on  small  private  grounds 
which  before  had  been  devoted,  very  rightfully,  to  beauty  and 
pleasure. 

To  carry  these  supplies  to  Europe  in  spite  of  the  ravages  of  Shipbuilding 
submarines  a  new  Shipping  Board  built  ships  on  a  scale  beyond 
all  precedent.  First  of  all,  new  shipyards  had  to  be  built, 
and  whole  new  cities  to  house  the  tens  of  thousands  of  new 
shipbuilders  —  who  in  turn  had  to  be  trained  for  their  new  work. 
Like  much  else  in  our  haste,  all  this  was  not  done  without  some 
sad  blunders  and  much  extravagance.  But  it  was  done,  and  done 
swiftly.  In  less  than  a  year,  America's  new  plants  were  turning 
out  ships  much  faster  than  England's  centuries-old  yards  had 
ever  launched  them.  The  new  shipyards  beat  the  submarine  — 
and  America  could  afford  some  extravagance  in  that  work  in 
return  for  speed. 

Transportation  at  home  had  its  own  problems.  The  rail-  The  rail- 
roads began  to  break  down  almost  at  once  under  the  increased 
business  imposed  upon  them  by  the  war;  and  the  nation  felt 
keenly  the  waste  of  so  many  non-cooperating  systems.  In 
December  of  the  first  year,  Congress  passed  a  law  turning  the 
railroads  over  to  the  government  (guaranteeing  profits  to  the 
owners),  which  began  to  operate  them  as  one  system  for  the 


road 


88  THE   WAR   AND    THE    NEW   AGE 

period   of   the   war.     Telegraph   and    express   companies   also 

passed  into  government  hands. 
Saving  coal         The  mines  were  not  ready  on  short  notice  to  supply  coal  as 
and  gasoline   fag£  ag  war  neec]s  calle(J  for  jt.     Hard  coal  for  ship  and  railroads 

and  for  many  war  industries  we  had  to  have.  Accordingly  the 
government  regulated  its  private  use.  People  learned  to  save 
fuel,  to  heat  their  houses  and  offices  only  to  65°  instead  of  to 
70°  or  72°,  and  many  changed  their  heating  plants  so  as  to  use 
soft  coal  or  wood.  For  many  weeks  in  1918,  at  the  request  of 
the  government,  churches  were  closed,  and  stores,  amusement 
halls,  and  most  industries  were  closed  on  certain  days  of  the 
week,  to  save  coal.  People  grumbled  a  little,  but  joked  and 
assented.  A  little  later,  to  save  gasoline  needed  in  France  for 
tanks  and  auto-trucks  and  aeroplanes,  "  gasless  Sunday  "  took 
its  recognized  place  alongside  "  heatless,"  "  wheatless,"  and 
"  meatless  "  days,  —  all  essentially  on  government  recommen- 
dation only. 

Labor  In  zeal  to  secure  more  rapid  output  of  war  supplies,  some 

standards  States  began  to  repeal  existing  laws  limiting  hours  of  labor  for 
women  and  children.  Organized  labor  protested  wisely,  and 
the  government  stepped  in  to  check  this  disastrous  tendency  — 
which  had  already  been  tried  and  abandoned  in  England.  The 
important  thing  was,  not  to  "  speed  up  "  production  for  a  few 
weeks,  at  cost  of  a  long  let  down  afterward,  but  rather  to  "  keep 
fit,"  to  keep  labor  at  the  top  notch  of  vitality,  to  gear  our  in- 
dustry for  a  long  hard  pull,  not  for  a  short  spurt.  Said  President 
Wilson,  in  a  telgram  to  one  State  governor : 

"  It  would  be  most  unfortunate  for  any  of  the  States  to  relax 
the  laws  by  which  safeguards  have  been  thrown  about  labor. 
I  feel  that  there  is  no  necessity  for  such  action.  It  would  lead 
to  a  slackening  of  the  energy  of  the  nation,  rather  than  to  an 
increase,  besides  being  unfair  to  the  workers." 

The  selec-         It  was  necessary  that  America  should  give  of  her  manhood  as 

tive  draft,       wej|  as  Qf  ner  weaith      g0  far  as  results  go,  that  story  has  been 

and  its  °  v 

success  told  in  preceding  pages.     Here  we  may  briefly  note  the  method. 


WAR  EFFICIENCY   OF  A   DEMOCRACY  89 

At  the  declaration  of  war,  eager  volunteers  pressed  forward 
for  army  and  navy;  but  what  was  needed  was  more  than 
individual  volunteers.  America  needed  a  wise  use  of  the  whole 
nation's  resources,  each  man  being  assigned  the  job  he  could  do 
best.  And  so,  May  18,  1917,  the  "  selective  draft "  became 
law.  Every  man  and  youth  from  18  to  45  (by  the  first  law  only 
from  21  to  31)  was  required  to  register  in  his  county  seat,  giving, 
in  answer  to  a  questionnaire,  full  information  about  his  character, 
training,  health,  and  ability.  All  were  liable  for  service :  the 
President  was  to  lay  down  principles  upon  which  to  select  for 
service  in  the  ranks  those  best  fitted,  or  most  easily  spared  from 
other  service. 

Before  the  end  of  the  year,  half  a  million  soldiers  were  train- 
ing in  fifty  swiftly  built  camps  —  each  camp  a  new  city  —  largely 
under  officers  who  had  been  trained  earlier  in  the  year  in  new 
officers'  training  camps ;  and  some  300,000  were  already  in 
France,  receiving  the  finishing  touches  to  their  training  just 
behind  the  trenches.  When  the  armistice  came,  a  year  later, 
we  had  three  million  men  under  arms,  of  whom  more  than  two 
million  were  doing  splendid  work  in  France.  It  is  hard  to  say 
whether  the  Kaiser  or  we  ourselves  were  the  more  astounded 
at  the  swift  making  of  an  American  army. 

Along  with  this  national  activity,  there  was  a  vast  volunteer  Local  ac- 
activity  by  local  democracies,  always  looking  gladly  to  Washing-  tlvlties 
ton  for  advice  and  direction,  but  also  quite  ready  to  trust  to 
their  own  initiative  if  needful.  Each  State  had  its  Council  of 
Defense  (modeled  on  the  Council  of  National  Defense).  Most 
of  these  were  well  supplied  with  State  funds  ;  and  many  of  them 
did  exceedingly  useful  work  in  promoting  unity,  arousing 
interest,  and  suppressing  possible  treason  within  their  States. 
Below  each  State  Council,  and  in  constant  touch  with  it,  were 
county  and  village  councils  of  like  character.  In  rural  dis- 
tricts, the  schoolhouse  was  usually  the  center  for  such  bodies 
to  meet,  as  well  as  for  local  chapters  of  the  Red  Cross  and  for 
war  lectures. 


90 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


Other  or- 
ganizations 


Even  more  significant  than  these  public  organizations,  were 
the  thousands  of  canvassing  boards  that  served  in  the  draft 
without  pay ;  the  examining  boards  of  busy  physicians,  who 
gave  their  time  freely  to  secure  the  physical  fitness  of  the  soldiers  ; 
the  volunteer  bodies  of  village  teachers,  working  Saturdays, 
Sundays,  and  nights,  to  classify  the  results  of  draft  ques- 
tionnaires ;  the  Red  Cross  societies  in  every  neighborhood ; 
and  the  volunteer  canvassers  for  Liberty  Bond  sales,  wherein 
the  Boy  Scouts  had  a  fine  share.  Democracy  proved  that, 
when  attacked,  it  could  put  aside  its  ordinary  life  of  work  and 
play,  to  take  on  war  activities  with  resolution,  efficiency,  and 
unanimity  unexcelled. 


The  work 
of  the 
women 


True,  there  were  some  blots  on  this  splendid  record.  Here 
and  there,  selfish  or  stupid  politicians  sought  personal  popu- 
larity by  wrapping  their  country's  flag  about  them,  or  tried  to 
discredit  or  destroy  rivals  by  false  accusations  of  lack  of  patriot- 
ism. In  the  heat  of  war  passion,  some  grave  injustices  were 
committed ;  and  some  foolish  offenders  were  punished  too 
severely.  Mob  violence,  even,  was  permitted,  and  in  some 
cases  against  thoroughly  patriotic  men  falsely  accused  by 
personal  enemies.  The  method  by  which  poor  people  were 
sometimes  intimidated  into  taking  more  bonds  than  they  could 
afford  did  not  suit  well  the  name  Liberty  for  those  bonds.  These 
things  America  will  regret;  but,  spite  of  such  blemishes,  the 
history  is  a  proud  one. 

It  will  not  do  to  omit  mention  of  woman's  share  in  the  war. 
In  all  the  good  work  described  above,  she  had  a  part.  But 
we  must  remember  further  that,  in  America  as  elsewhere,  behind 
each  man  who  took  up  a  rifle  there  stood  a  woman  to  take  up 
the  work  he  laid  down.  Even  in  America,  women  ran  elevators, 
street  cars,  and  motor  busses,  and  took  up  new  and  heavy  work 
in  factories,  —  especially  in  munition  factories  and  in  air-craft 
building.  In  England,  as  her  men  were  drained  away,  five 
million  women  took  up  men's  work,  —  an  Earl's  daughter 
sometimes  toiling  in  a  munition  factory  at  the  same  bench  with 


WAR  EFFICIENCY    OF  A   DEMOCRACY  91 

a  working  girl  from  the  streets.  And  in  America,  in  twenty 
states,  college  girls  enlisted  in  the  "  Woman's  Land  Army," 
for  outdoor  farm  work. 

Nor  was  it  only  in  manual  toil  that  these  new  workers  played 
a  new  part.  Many  kinds  of  office  work  and  business  manage- 
ment were  taken  over  by  women  with  marked  success  —  as 
well  as  much  of  the  organization  and  most  of  the  work  of  the 
Red  Cross  both  in  America  and  with  the  American  army  in 
France. 

In  all  countries  this  war  efficiency  of  women  gave  the  final 
impetus  to  the  movement  for  equal  suffrage.  The  last  "  argu- 
ment "  against  suffrage  —  the  silly  plea  that  a  woman  ought 
not  to  vote  because  she  could  not  fight  —  was  proved  false. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   WORLD   LEAGUE   AND    NEW   EUROPE 

January  18,  1871,  the  first  German  Emperor  placed  the  new 
imperial   crown   upon  his   own  head   at  Versailles,   while   his 
victorious  armies  were  still  besieging  Paris.     January  18,  1919, 
the  Peace  Congress  opened  its  meetings  in  the  same  room  of 
the  Versailles  Palace,  to  reconstruct  Europe  after  the  fall  of 
the  German  Empire. 
Attempts  at       There  was  supreme  need  of  reconstruction.     Central  Europe 
class  rule  in  naa-  broken  into  fragments,   and  each   fragment  was   tossing 
Central  helplessly  on  waves  of   revolution.     In   Germany  an  extreme 

urope  wing  of  the  Socialists,  led  by  Karl  Liebknecht  and  Rosa  Luxem- 

burg, were  planning  a  second  revolution  to  take  power  from 
the  "Conservative  Socialists"  of  the  Provisional  Government 
into  the  hands  of  the  working  class.  Those  two  leaders, 
splendidly  fearless,  had  been  foremost  in  all  Germany  in  oppos- 
ing Prussian  militarism  before  the  war ; '  and  Liebknecht  had 
spent  most  of  the  war  years  in  prison  as  a  traitor  to  German 
autocracy,  because  he  had  dared  to  oppose  the  war  even  after  it 
began.  Freed  by  the  fall  of  autocracy,  he  now  taught  that 
selfish  capitalist  and  imperialist  forces  would  try  to  make  a 
peace  of  plunder.  Only  a  workingman's  government  in  Ger- 
many, he  preached,  and  the  spread  of  such  a  government  into 
France  and  England,  could  secure  a  lasting  peace  based  on 
justice  and  righteousness. 

This  mistaken  rloetrine,  however  honest  in  the  leaders,  was 
suited  for  use  by  selfishness,  ignorance,  and  passion.  Accord- 
ingly   in    several    large   German    cities,    especially    in    Berlin, 


1  See  C.  Altschul's  German  Militarism  and  its  German  Critics,  War  Infor- 
mation Scries,  Xo.  13. 

92 


THE  WORLD  LEAGUE  AND  NEW  EUROPE         93 

"Soldiers  and  Workingmen's  Councils"  seized  the  government 
in  the  interest,  not  of  democracy,  but  of  "class"  rule.  These 
bodies  were  attacked  promptly  by  the  regular  troops,  which  for 
the  most  part  remained  true  to  the  Provisional  Government. 
Thousands  fell  in  bloody  street  fights,  marked  by  the  use  of 
poison  gas,  machine  guns,  and  liquid  fire.  The  superior  equip- 
ment of  the  government  forces  in  all  such  respects  triumphed ; 
and  Liebknecht  and  Rosa  Luxemburg  were  taken  prisoners  — 
and  brutally  murdered  by  their  guards.1 

Then  in  January,    1919,   Germany  held  an  election  for  a   German 
National  Assembly.     By  a  new  franchise  law  promulgated  by    A^l^biv 
the  Provisional  Government,  all  men  and  women  over  19  years   of  1919 
of  age  had  been  given  the  vote,  and  an  excellent  system  of 
"proportional  representation"  secured  due  weight  to  minority 
parties.     The  result  was  a  clear  victory  for  a  union  of  Moderate 
Socialists  ("Majority  Socialists")   and  "German  Democrats" 
(the  old  Liberals). 

To  avoid  revolutionary  dangers,  the  Assembly  met  at  Weimar 
instead  of  at  Berlin.  By  a  3  to  1  vote,  it  chose  Ebert  (once  a 
saddler)  president  of  the  German  Republic  (February  11), 
organized  under  a  coalition  cabinet  led  by  Philip  Scheidemann, 
and  discussed  a  new  permanent  constitution  while  waiting 
for  peace  terms  from  the  Allies. 

Through  the  winter  and  spring,  this  government  was  con- 
stantly threatened  by  further  revolution.  Factories  could 
not  open  for  lack  of  cotton,  or  rubber,  or  iron,  or  capital,  or 
markets  in  which  to  sell  goods.  Germany's  ships  had  been 
taken  by  the  Allies,  to  help  replace  those  her  submarines  had 
sunk,  and  the  Allied  blockade  had  been  lifted  only  far  enough 
to  permit  the  introduction  of  some  foods,  —  not  enough  to 
restore  any  real  trade  with  the  world.  Under  these  conditions, 
new  proletarian  revolutions  took  place  in  some  of  the  states,  —  rian  Revo~ 
especially  in  Bavaria,  where  a  workingman's  government  main-  lution 

1  Some  of  the  assassins  were  obliged  to  go  through  the  form  of  a  trial. 
Two  were  sentenced  to  two  years'  imprisonme?it :  but  the  next  day  one  of 
these  "escaped,"  — a  fitting  conclusion  to  the  farce  of  the  trial. 


94  THE   WAR  AND   THE   NEW   AGE 

tained  itself  ably  for  several  weeks,  until  crushed,  after  the  assas- 
sination of  its  leader,  Kurt  Eisner,  by  the  union  of  all  other  forces.1 

An  American  newspaper  correspondent  and  editor  describes 
for  his  paper  the  session  of  the  Bavarian  legislature  February 
22,  1919.  He  had  just  entered  the  newspaper  gallery  for  the 
first  time.  "The  correspondent  of  the  Frankfurter  Zcitung 
kindly  pointed  out  the  various  dignitaries.  That  Minister 
on  the  right  was  a  locksmith's  apprentice  a  little  while  ago. 
Timm,  Minister  of  Education,  on  the  left,  is  a  tailor's  son 
and  was  long  a  public  school  teacher ;  Suer,  there,  about  whose 
head  the  storm  is  raging,  is  the  son  of  a  sewing  woman.  He 
left  school  at  eleven  to  be  a  herd  boy  for  eleven  years.  .  .  . 
Several  women  delegates  came  in.  Now  they  are  all  here 
except  the  President,  Kurt  Eisner  (who  had  been  a  poor  news- 
paper man).  Then  a  young  man  rushes  in,  pale  as  a  sheet, 
and  a  voice  calls  '  Kurt  Eisner  has  been  shot.'  " 

The  old  German  Austria  became  a  republic,  and  the  govern- 
ment voted  repeatedly  in  favor  of  joining  Germany  ;  but  France 
was  unwilling  to  see  Germany  so  strengthened ;  and,  as  a  result, 
Austria,  too,  has  been  threatened  with  a  proletarian  revolution. 
Hungary  Hungary  had  become  a  republic  under  enlightened  middle- 

and  Austria  cjass  control.  The  President,  the  liberal-minded  Count  Karolyi, 
voluntarily  gave  up  his  princely  domain  for  common  use,  and 
plead  with  the  Allies  for  terms  that  might  make  the  new  govern- 
ment secure.  The  delay  of  the  Allies  in  relieving  the  country, 
so  that  it  might  get  food  and  work,  led  after  a  few  weeks  to 
a  further  revolution,  —  perfectly  bloodless  this  time,  —  which 
put  in  power  a  proletarian  dictatorship  under  Bela  Kun,  similar 
to  the  Bolshevist  rule  in  Russia.  This  has  just  given  way 
(August,  1919),  under  Allied  pressure,  to  a  more  moderate 
Socialist  rule.         Moreover  Roumania  had  taken  advantage  of 


1  The  German  Republic  will  he  a  federal  state.  Of  course  each  state  had 
already  put  off  the  old  monarchic  government.  In  Prussia,  for  instance, 
the  Upper  House  of  the  legislature  had  been  abolished,  and  the  Lower  House 
was  now  elected  by  universal  franchise  —  which  included  women. 


THE   WORLD   LEAGUE   AND   NEW   EUROPE 


95 


the  woes  of  Hungary  to  declare  war  upon  that  country,  and 
continued  her  invasion  even  after  the  Hungarian  government 
declared  its  willingness  to  cede  all  its  Roumanian  lands  —  until 
the  Peace  Congress  called  a  halt. 

All  the  other  lands  of  the  old  "Central  Empire"  had  already 
fallen  away,  but  not  into  peace.     An  enlarged  and  free  Bohemia 


(the  Czecho-Slav  Republic)  was  practically  at  war  not  merely 
with  Germany  and  Austria,  but  also  with  the  new  Polish  Repub- 
lic, over  conflicting  boundary  claims ;  and  this  new  Poland, 
under  the  leadership  of  Paderewski,  the  famous  pianist,  had 
other  contests  with  Russian  Bolsheviki  on  one  side  and  with 
Germany  on  the  remaining  land  frontier,  besides  being  torn  by 


96        THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

internal  factions  and  busied  in  massacring  its  Jews.  To  the 
south  of  old  Austria,  there  had  appeared  a  Jugo-Slav  republic 
by  the  long  sought  union  of  Serbians,  Bosnians,  Croatians,  and 
Slovenes ;  but  this  enlarged  Serbia  and  Italy  were  in  battle 
array,  daily  in  peril  of  war,  over  the  Adriatic  coast ;  while  Italy 
and  Greece  were  at  daggers'  points  regarding  South  Albania, 
the  islands  of  the  JEge&n,  and  the  shores  of  Asia  Minor. 

No  one  of  these  countries  felt  any  trust  in  the  honor  of  any 
other.  Each  believed  that  every  one  would  hold  what  he  could 
lay  hands  on,  and  so  sought  to  lay  his  own  hands  on  as  much 
as  possible  before  the  day  of  settlement.  The  Peace  Congress 
had  its  work  cut  out  for  it. 
The  Peace  That  famous  gathering  contained  the  leading  statesmen  of 

Congress  the  worj(j.  The  United  States,  Great  Britain,  France,  Italy, 
and  Japan  each  sent  five  delegates.  England's  colonies,  too, 
were  represented,  —  two  each  from  Canada,  Australia,  South 
Africa,  and  India,  and  one  from  New  Zealand.  Eighteen  other 
governments,  which  had  taken  part  in  the  war  upon  the  side  of 
the  Allies,  were  allowed  from  one  to  three  delegates  each.  Each 
delegation  voted  as  a  unit.  Countries  that  had  been  neutral 
were  also  invited  to  send  representatives  to  be  called  in  when- 
ever matters  arose  that  specially  concerned  them.  The  four 
"enemy  countries"  and  Russia  were  allowed  no  part.  A  strik- 
ing feature  of  the  gathering  was  the  great  number  of  expert 
assistants  accompanying  their  representatives.  The  United 
States  delegation  alone  was  aided  by  more  than  a  hundred 
prominent  men,  most  of  them  eminent  authorities  on  the  his- 
tory or  geography  or  economic  resources  of  European  lands. 
Woodrow  President  Wilson  himself  headed  the  American  delegation,  — 

Wilson  at  m  Sp}te  0f  vehement  opposition  to  his  leaving  his  own  country 
for  so  long  a  time.  In  like  manner,  Lloyd  George  and  Orlando, 
the  English  and  Italian  premiers,  represented  their  lands ;  and 
Clemenceau,  head  of  the  French  delegation,  was  naturally 
chosen  president  of  the  Assembly.  These  men  made  up  "the 
Big  Four."  Part  of  the  time  this  inner  circle  became  the  "Big 
Five"  by  the  inclusion  of  the  Japanese  representative. 


THE  WORLD  LEAGUE  AND  NEW  EUROPE    97 

From  the  first  it  was  plain  that  even  within  the  Big  Four 
there  were  critical  differences.  Mr.  Wilson  had  promised  the 
world,  Germany  included,  "a  permanent  peace  based  on  un- 
selfish, unbiased  justice,"  and  "a  new  international  order  based 
upon  broad  universal  principles  of  right."  To  such  ends  he  in- 
sisted, (1)  that  the  first  step  must  be  the  organization  of  a 
League  of  Nations,  a  World  federation ;  and  (2)  that  all  nego- 
tiations should  be  public  —  "  open  covenants,  openly  arrived  at." 

At  times,  Lloyd  George  seemed  heartily  to  adopt  this  same   Lloyd 
program;    but  he  was  seriously  hampered  by   the  fact  that      ^(fi6 
in  the  campaign  for  parliamentary  elections,  in  December,  he  menceau 
had  won  by  appeals  to  the  worst  war  passions  of  the  English 
people,  even  promising  preposterously  that  Germany  should 
pay  "the  whole  cost  of  the  war."     The  other  leaders  never  had 
any  real  faith  in  the  Wilson  program.     In  Clemenceau's  words, 
they  looked  upon  President  Wilson  as  a  benevolent  dreamer 
of  Utopias,  and  they  preferred  to  rest  all  rearrangements  upon 
the  old  European  methods  of  rival  alliances  to  maintain  a  balance 
of  power  —  a  plan  which  had  been  tried,  only  to  prove  through 
bloody  centuries  a  seed  bed  of  war. 

Moreover  France  was  dissatisfied  and  panicky.     Germany,    Govern- 
prostrate  for  the  moment,  still  bordered  upon  her,  with  a  popu-   ments  a°d 
lation  and  resources  a  half  greater  than  her  own.     So  it  is  easy   Europe 
to  understand  that  many  French  statesmen  should  have  wished 
above  all  things  to  deal  with  Germany  by  German  methods 
—  to  make  her  helpless  by  dismembering  her  and  by  plundering 
her  through  indemnities,  and  to  build  up  the  new  Poland  and 
Bohemia  by  giving  them  enough  German  territory  so  that  they 
might  always  be  fearful  of  Germany  and  therefore  hostile  to  her. 
Such  states  on  the  east,  with  France  on  the  west,  could  then 
hold  Germany  in  a  vise  between  them. 

Such  a  program  meant  the  perpetuation  of  the  old  European 
system  of  alliances,  armed  camps,  and,  sooner  or  later,  of  war. 
But  by  the  war-weary  peoples,  if  not  by  the  governments  of 
Europe,  the  Wilson  program  of  a  just  peace  and  a  world-league 
was  at  first  hailed  with  joy.     Mr.  Wilson  had  arrived  in  Europe 


98 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


Mr.  Wilson 
weakened 
by  events 
at  home 


several  weeks  before  the  opening  of  the  Congress,  for  conferences 
with  European  statesmen ;  and  everywhere  in  his  journey  —  in 
England,  France,  Italy  —  he  was  welcomed  by  the  working 
classes  with  remarkable  demonstrations  of  respect  and  affec- 
tion, as  "  the  president  of  all  of  us,"  as  the  Italians  put  it,  —  as 
the  apostle  of  world  peace  and  of  human  brotherhood.  For 
a  time  it  looked  possible  for  him,  at  a  crisis,  to  override  the  hostile 
attitude  of  the  governments  by  appealing  over  their  heads  to 
the  people  themselves  :  and  indeed  in  a  great  speech  at  Milan 
—  just  after  some  slurring  attacks  upon  him  by  French  states- 
men—  he  hinted  pointedly  at  such  a  possible  program. 

But  as  months  passed  in  wearisome  negotiations,  this  popular 
fervor  wasted  away,  and  in  each  nation  bitter  animosities  began 
to  show  toward  neighboring  and  allied  peoples.  Moreover 
Mr.  Wilson  had  been  fatally  weakened  in  Europe  by  events  at 
home.  Late  in  the  campaign  for  the  new  Congressional  elec- 
tions in  the  preceding  November,  he  had  made  a  special  and 
ill-judged  appeal  to  the  country  for  indorsement  of  his  policies 
by  a  Democratic  victory.  But  the  elections  instead  gave  both 
Houses  to  the  Republicans;  and  the  jubilant  victors,  charging 
vengefully  that  the  President  had  set  an  example  of  political 
partisanship,  entered  upon  a  bitter  course  of  criticism  and 
obstruction.  Mr.  Wilson's  European  opponents  made  the  most 
of  this  —  if  indeed  they  did  not,  as  many  thought,  have  a 
positive  part  in  starting  it. 

Mr.  W7ilson's  first  defeat  at  Paris  was  in  the  matter  of  secret 
negotiations  negotiation.  To  save  time,  it  was  necessary  no  doubt  for  the 
Peace  Congress  to  do  most  of  its  work  in  small  committees. 
But  it  would  have  been  possible  to  lessen  bargaining  and  in- 
trigue by  having  such  meetings  open,  or  at  least  by  having  sten- 
ographic reports  of  each  meeting.  Mr.  Wilson,  however, 
allowed  the  Old  World  diplomats  —  with  their  tradition  of 
backstair  intrigue  —  to  outgeneral  him  into  consenting  to 
only  one  public  and  general  meeting  each  week.  The  result 
was  that,  from  the  first,  the  real  work  was  done  by  the  inner 
circle  of  four  or  five  in  secret  conclave  (with  the  addition  of 


Secret 


THE  WORLD  LEAGUE  AND  NEW  EUROPE    99 

several  advisory  secret  committees  on  special  matters) ;  and 
instead  of  even  the  promised  open  meeting  once  a  week  there 
were  during  the  entire  five  months  (January  18  —  June  28) 
only  four  such  meetings  —  and  these  not  really  for  discussion 
but  merely  to  ratify  conclusions  arrived  at  by  the  Big  Four. 

The  next  point  Mr.  Wilson  won.     It  was  agreed  that  the  Agreement 
first  business  of  the  Congress  should  be  to  provide  a  League  L°eraau     f 
of  Nations.     With  such  a  league  to  guarantee  peace,  to  secure  Nations 
disarmament,  and  to  punish  any  bully  or  robber  state,  it  was 
hoped  that  France  and  Italy  might  trust  to  a  just  and  merciful 
peace,  instead  of  insisting  upon  a  peace  of  vengeance  and  booty. 
Many  voices,  in  France  and  in  the  United  States  Senate,  had 
been  raised  in  protest,  urging  instead,  as  German  statesmen  had 
urged  while  they  felt  themselves  victorious,  that  such  a  league 
should  come  only  after  a  treaty  of  peace.     But  Mr.  Wilson 
argued  that  the  League  would  expedite,  not  hinder,  the  peace 
treaty,  since  it  was  a  necessary  prelude  to  any  right  sort  of 
peace.     This  view  prevailed. 

While  a  committee  of  fourteen  nations,  headed  by  Mr.  Spoils  or 
Wilson,  was  preparing  the  covenant,  or  constitution,  of  the  ^us  ice 
League,  the  American  President  won  what  seemed  for  a  time 
another  great  victory.  The  first  discussions  regarding  terri- 
torial changes  showed  the  usual  disposition  on  the  part  of  the 
victors  to  grab  spoils.  France  talked  of  the  necessity  that  she 
acquire  all  German  territory  west  of  the  Rhine,  "her  natural 
frontier,"  so  that  in  future  wars  that  great  river  might  serve 
as  a  protective  ditch.  Marshal  Foch  supported  this  plea  for 
military  reasons.  This  of  course  would  have  transferred  several 
millions  of  unwilling  Germans  to  French  rule. 

Italy,  too,  advanced  new  claims  on  the  Adriatic  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  new  South  Slav  state.  And  it  became  plain  that  the 
imperfectly  known  "secret  treaties,"  under  which  Italy  and 
Japan  had  entered  the  war,  had  provided  for  a  far-reaching 
division  of  spoils  not  only  at  the  expense  of  Germany  but  also 
to  the  danger  of  future  wars.  Enough  news  leaked  out  from  the 
secret  conclaves  to  make  it  certain  that  President  Wilson  at 


100 


THE    WAR   AND    THE    NEW    AGE 


The  Cov- 
enant of  the 
League  of 
Nations 


once  denounced  these  projects,  and  declared  he  would  have 
no  part  in  a  "Congress  for  booty."  At  one  time,  indeed,  when 
the  Italian  delegates  insisted  strenuously  upon  Croatian  Finnic 
(the  natural  door  of  the  South  Slavs  to  the  Adriatic),  he  cabled 
to  America  for  his  ship  —  a  plain  threat  that  he  would  leave 
Paris  rather  than  assent.  England  and  France  then  gave  him 
their  support,  and  this  particular  act  of  plunder  was  avoided  — 
even  though  Orlando  did  for  a  while  leave  the  Congress  in  pro- 
test. Unhappily  in  other  cases  Mr.  Wilson  was  not  always  so 
resolute.  Victory  over  Fiume  was  followed  by  defeat  over 
Shantung  (p.  103). 

For  a  moment  England  seemed  to  hold  the  key  to  the 
situation.  The  secret  treaties  had  assumed  that  she  would 
retain  the  great  bulk  of  the  German  colonies.  For  this  there 
would  have  been  much  excuse.  She  had  proved  her  eminent 
fitness  for  control  of  tropical  colonies ;  and  some  of  the  con- 
quered districts  —  if  a  state  of  war  was  to  be  looked  upon  as 
probable  in  the  future  —  were  essential  to  the  safety  of  her  other 
dominions.  Indeed  the  South  African  and  Australian  repre- 
sentatives at  Paris  faced  political  death  if  they  returned  home 
without  German  Southwest  Africa  and  German  New  Guinea 
in  their  pockets.  But  Lloyd  George  came  loyally  to  Wilson's 
side.  Unless  England  renounced  her  conquests  for  the  general 
good,  there  was  no  escape  from  an  old-fashioned  peace  of  plun- 
der ;  if  she  did  renounce  them,  there  seemed  good  hope  that 
England  and  the  United  States  together  might  persuade  the 
other  Allies  to  yield  their  selfish  and  injurious  claims  under  the 
secret  treaties.  And  renounce  the  colonies  England  did  — 
though  the  renunciation  was  accompanied  by  the  suggestion  of 
mandatories,  responsible  to  the  coming  League  of  Nations. 

In  March,  while  other  negotiations  dragged  along,  the  commit- 
tee on  the  League  of  Nations  made  its  report,  and  the  Congress 
enthusiastically  adopted  the  proposed  constitution.  The  chief 
opposition  to  the  proposal  appeared  in  the  United  States  Senate, 
where  leading  Republicans  tried  to  make  it  a  party  question. 
This  was  rendered  difficult,  happily,  by  the  splendid  work  of  ex- 


THE   WORLD   LEAGUE   AND   NEW   EUROPE       101 

President  Taft,  head  of  the  American  League  to  Enforce  Peace, 
who,  with  a  group  of  leading  Republicans,  toured  the  country 
to  secure  support  for  the  covenant.  The  opposition  was  suffi- 
cient, however,  so  that  after  a  few  weeks,  the  Peace  Congress 
revised  the  document  in  a  few  details. 

The  revised  covenant  is  clear  and  brief.  The  union  is  very 
loose,  and  its  managing  bodies  are  not  really  a  government. 
The  forty-five  "charter  members"  include  all  organized  govern- 
ments except  Russia,  the  four  "enemy  countries,"  Costa  Rica, 
San  Domingo,  and  Mexico ;  and  there  is  a  way  provided  for 
admitting  these  in  time.  Amendments  require  the  unanimous 
consent  of  the  five  big  states  with  a  majority  of  all  states  ;  and 
the  unanimous  consent  of  all  nations  in  the  League  is  demanded 
for  any  other  action  of  consequence,  except  that  no  party  to  a 
dispute  has  a  voice  in  its  settlement.  Among  the  most  valuable 
provisions  of  the  "Covenant"  are  the  prohibition  of  all  secret 
treaties  in  future  and  the  clauses  providing  for  disarmament, 
for  regulation  of  the  manufacture  of  munitions  of  war,  for 
compulsory  arbitration,  and  for  delay  in  recourse  to  war  even  if 
an  arbitration  is  unsatisfactory.  A  reservation  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine,  inserted  in  the  second  draft  as  a  sop  to  American 
opposition,  suggests,  by  its  unfortunate  phrasing,  a  continuation 
of  the  pernicious  doctrine  of  "spheres  of  influence,"  and  satisfies 
neither  advocates  nor  opponents  of  the  League.  Much  debated, 
too,  is  Article  X,  which  guarantees  to  each  state  its  territorial 
integrity  against  external  attack.  Mr.  Wilson  wrote  the  origi- 
nal of  this  Article,  —  but  in  a  very  different  form,  suggesting 
especially  the  desirability  of  future  peaceful  correction  of  terri- 
torial boundaries  by  the  League  of  Nations.  In  the  present 
form,  many  critics  fear,  the  Article  may  be  a  serious  barrier  to 
needed  readjustments. 

The  value  of  the  League  will  depend  upon  how  it  is  worked.   The  Ger- 
Meanwhile,  to  secure  a  League,  Mr.  Wilson  "traded"  many  of  man  rea^ 
his  principles  in  the  making  of  the  peace  treaties.     Early  in  May 
the  treaty  of  peace  with  Germany  was  handed  to  the  German 


102 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


delegates,  who  had  been  summoned  to  Paris  to  sign  for  their 
country.  The  treaty  makes  a  good-sized  book.  Only  a  few 
points  can  be  stated  here.  A  typical  one  relates  to  the  Saar 
Valley,  a  small  strip  of  German  territory  just  east  of  Alsace. 

Germany  is  to  cede  the  rich  coal  mines  of  this  region  to  France, 
in  rightful  reparation  of  her  wanton  destruction  of  French 
coal  mines.  Unhappily  France  insisted  long  upon  political 
sovereignty  over  the  territory  and  people,  along  with  this 
property.  This  claim  was  not  granted ;  but  an  unsatisfactory 
compromise  places  the  valley  for  fifteen  years  under  an  Inter- 
national Commission.  At  the  end  of  that  time  the  inhabitants 
are  to  vote  whether  they  will  return  to  Germany  or  join  France. 
If  they  decide  for  their  own  country,  Germany  must  at  once 
buy  up  France's  claim  to  the  coal  mines.  This  may  be  difficult 
for  her  to  do ;  but  if  she  fails  to  do  it,  the  territory  passes  at 
once  and  permanently  to  France. 

This  "  veiled  annexation"  of  half  a  million  Germans  to  a 
foreign  power,  against  their  will,  is  in  sharp  defiance  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  "self-determination,"  —  and  it  was  wholly  unnecessary. 
France  ought  to  have  the  coal ;  but  title  to  that  could  have  been 
guaranteed  safely,  under  the  League  of  Nations,  without  this 
transfer  of  political  allegiance.  And  the  Saar  Valley  arrange- 
ment is  merely  one  of  several  like  or  worse  arrangements.  The 
new  Poland  gets  not  merely  the  Polish  territory  long  held  by 
Prussia,  to  which  she  is  entitled,  but  also  large  strips  of  German 
territory,  like  Upper  Silesia  (with  its  two  million  people),  which 
she  wants  solely  because  of  its  mines.  Moreover,  in  order  to  give 
Poland  easy  access  to  the  sea,  by  the  route  of  the  Vistula,  Ger- 
man Dantzig  is  made  a  "free"  city,  against  its  will.  Besides 
these  displeasing  provisions,  Germany  very  properly  not  only 
returns  Alsace-Lorraine  to  France  and  (with  a  favorable  vote 
of  the  inhabitants)  Danish  Sleswig  to  Denmark,  but  also  cedes 
to  Belgium  three  small  pieces  of  territory  populated  mainly 
by  people  of  Belgian  blood.  In  addition  to  all  this,  if  the  in- 
habitants so  vote,  she  is  to  cede  to  Poland  considerable  territory 
east  of   the   Vistula.     In  all,  Germany  loses  outright  35,000 


THE  WORLD   LEAGUE  AND  NEW  EUROPE       103 

square  miles,  with  a  probable  loss  (by  plebiscites)  of  nearly 
20,000  more  —  in  all,  a  territory  about  the  extent  of  Penn- 
sylvania, and  more  than  a  fifth  of  the  old  Germany.  Even 
this  is  not  enough  to  satisfy  the  French  government.  That 
government  has  failed  to  get  recognition  for  its  claim  to  the 
Rhine  districts  of  Germany ;  but  attempts,  which  may  yet 
succeed,  have  been  fomented  by  French  agents  to  induce  this 
part  of  Germany  to  secede  and  form  a  separate  state. 

Besides  all  this,  Germany  has  lost  her  vast  colonial  empire.  The  old 
This  is  well.  But,  instead  of  being  placed  directly  under  the  Col°mes 
guardianship  of  the  League  of  Nations  until  they  can  walk  alone, 
the  former  German  colonies  are  turned  over,  part  to  England, 
part  to  Japan,  according  to  the  terms  of  a  secret  treaty  of  1914 
between  those  countries.  True,  England  and  Japan  are  "  manda- 
tories" of  the  League  of  Nations;  but  that  arrangement  is  left 
so  vague  and  loose  that  it  looks  like  little  more  than  a  scheme 
for  the  division  of  spoils  —  and  Japan  surely  has  shown  herself 
(in  Korea)  as  unfit  to  rule  subject-peoples  as  ever  Germany  was. 

In  this  connection  Americans  are  especially  chagrined  The 
that  Japan  succeeds  also  to  all  Germany's  indefinite  matter 
"rights"  in  the  Shantung  Peninsula,  against  the  futile 
protest  of  China.  True,  Japan  has  promised  vaguely  that 
her  political  occupation  shall  be  "temporary";  but  that 
word  has  been  used  too  often  as  a  prelude  to  permanent 
grabs  of  territory.  To  allow  the  one  remaining  despotic 
and  military  power  in  the  world  so  to  seize  the  door  to 
China  is  not  merely  to  betray  a  faithful  ally,  but  also 
to  renounce  a  plain  and  wise  American  policy  in  the 
Orient. 

Very  objectionable,  too,  are  the  economic  provisions  of  the 
German  treaty.  Germany  is  to  pay  fixed  reparations  amount- 
ing to  about  30  billions  of  dollars  during  the  next  fifteen  years. 
This  is  severe,  but  on  the  whole  it  is  just.  However,  Germany  is 
to  pay  further  indefinite  amounts,  to  be  determined  in  future 
by  a  commission  of  her  conquerors.     This  provision,  along  with 


104 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 


accompanying  rules  regarding  German  taxation,  leaves  Ger- 
many's head  in  a  noose  which  English  or  French  jealousy  may 
tighten  at  will. 


"  Liberal  " 
criticism 
of  the 
treaty 


The  treaty  has  been  denounced  vehemently  by  many  earnest 
thinkers  in  all  lands  as  breaking  faith  with  a  beaten  and  sub- 
missive foe,  and,  still  more,  as  fruitful  of  future  wars.  Nine 
of  the  experts  attached  to  the  American  Commission  were  so 
disappointed  that  they  resigned  their  positions  in  protest; 
and  General  Smuts,  the  hero  of  South  Africa,  when  signing  for 
that  country,  declared  in  a  formal  statement  that  he  signed  only 
because  of  the  absolute  necessity  of  immediate  peace  for  Europe 
and  because  he  hoped  that  the  most  objectionable  provisions 
might  be  modified  in  future  by  the  League  of  Nations.  Or- 
ganized labor  in  England  and  France  made  earnest  protests  also 
against  the  violations  in  the  treaty  of  the  principle  of  self- 
determination. 

This  opposition  has  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  any  sym- 
pathy for  Germany  :  it  is  based  upon  a  conviction  that  the 
terms  are  bad  for  the  world  at  large,  or  that  they  are  dishon- 
orable to  the  Allies.  But  a  stern  peace  was  to  be  expected, 
and  in  the  conflict  of  so  many  claims,  some  unsatisfactory  pro- 
visions were  sure  to  appear.  Probably  the  majority  of  the 
people  in  the  Allied  lands  still  feel  that  Germany  is  getting  off 
too  easily. 

The  German  delegates  made  many  protests,  and  did  secure 
some  very  slight  modifications  in  the  terms.  Then  they  re- 
fused to  sign.  But  a  new  Cabinet  came  into  power,  and,  June 
28,  a  new  set  of  German  delegates  signed  the  treaty.  The 
five  years'  war  was  ended.  A  few  days  later,  the  German 
assembly  ratified  the  peace  by  a  two-to-one  vote.  The  English 
Parliament  approved  it  even  more  unanimously.  At  this  writ- 
ing (July  25)  the  United  States  Senate  has  not  come  to  a  vote 
upon  the  matter — because  of  the  intertwining  of  the  League  of 
Nations  with  the  peace  —  but  commercial  intercourse  with  Ger- 
many has  been  restored. 


THE   WORLD   LEAGUE   AND  NEW  EUROPE       105 

Late  in  July,  after  the  return  of  President  Wilson  to  America,  The 
the  treaty  with  Austria  was  completed  at  Paris.  Austria  her-  V6*!7-  Wlth 
self  is  left  a  petty  state  of  7,000,000  people,  grouped  around 
Vienna,  shut  off  from  the  sea,  with  little  excuse  for  a  separate 
political  existence.  The  Austrians  very  naturally  wish  incor- 
poration with  Germany.  Germany  also  desires  it ;  but  at  French 
insistence,  the  Peace  Congress  has  forbidden  this  application  of 
the  principle  of  "self-determination."  The  other  precise  ter- 
ritorial terms  of  the  treaty  are  not  yet  made  public.  The  most 
delicate  concern  the  frontier  between  the  new  South  Slav  state 
and  Italy.  In  general  the  treaty  has  the  same  traits  as  does  the 
treaty  with  Germany. 

The  treaties  with  Bulgaria  and  with  Turkey  are  still  to  be   Remaining 
worked  out.     The  latter  will  care  for  important  problems  such  P^le™s 

cit  x  tins 

as  the  disposition  of  Constantinople,  of  Armenia,  of  Palestine, 
and  of  the  rich  valley  of  the  Euphrates.  At  the  conclusion  of 
peace  with  Germany  the  great  statesmen  left  the  Peace  Con- 
gress, to  attend  to  pressing  needs  in  their  own  parliaments ;  but 
the  remaining  delegates  at  Paris  will  probably  be  busied  for 
many  weeks  in  settling  these  remaining  matters. 


CHAPTER  XII 

HEALING   FORCES 

The  cost  of        The  war  was  a  world  war  :     Eight  out  of  every  nine  men  on 

the  war  the  globe  belonged  to  the  warring  nations.     It  cost  nine  million 

lives  and  200  billion  dollars.     A  vast  portion  of  all  the  wealth 

stored  up  laboriously  through  centuries  is  consumed,  and  over 

wide  areas  all  the  machinery  for  producing  wealth  is  gone. 

The  United  States  had  relatively  small  sacrifices  to  make. 
We  entered  late,  and  our  borders  were  remote  from  the  struggle. 
Still,  eighty  thousand  American  boys  lie  in  French  soil,  and  thrice 
as  many  were  horribly  maimed.  As  to  money,  aside  from  the 
immense  sums  raised  by  war  taxes,  our  war  debt  is  nearly 
twenty-five  billions,  besides  some  nine  billions  more  that  our 
The  cost  government  borrowed  from  our  people  to  loan  to  England, 
still  to  be  France,  Belgium,  and  Italy.  On  these  loans  the  Allied  govern- 
ments will  pay  the  interest,  and  possibly  sometime  they  will  be 
able  to  repay  the  principal ;  but  on  the  remaining  twenty-five 
billions  the  interest  alone  will  each  year  exceed  the  total  yearly 
expenditure  of  our  government  before  the  war.  Without  paying 
a  cent  of  the  principal,  we  will  have  to  tax  ourselves  each  year 
twice  as  much  as  ever  before  for  our  national  government. 

But  we  must  also  pay  the  principal.  If  we  pay  it  in  one 
generation  (as  probably  we  will),  that  will  mean  one  billion 
more  of  taxes  a  year.  As  we  pay  the  principal,  the  interest 
will  lessen  ;  but,  taking  into  account  the  increased  cost  of  living 
for  the  government,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  for  the  next  twenty-five 
years  we  must  raise  three  billion  dollars  a  year,  —  or  three 
fourths  as  much  as  in  the  war  years  themselves.  We  have 
boasted  that  in  this  country  the  war  has  been  paid  for  by  the 
wealthy  classes,  not  by  the  poor.     But  so  far  (1919)  we  have 

106 


HEALING   FORCES 


107 


"hardly  begun  to  pay  that  cost :  if  our  boast  is  to  be  made  good, 
we  must  raise  more  than  two  thirds  of  our  taxes  during  the 
next  years  by  income  and  luxury  taxes. 

In  Europe  the  burden  is  terrifying.  Words  cannot  express  Conditions 
the  ruin  there ;  and  the  huge  totals  of  indebtedness  in  France,  in  urope 
England,  and  Germany  have  little  meaning  to  us.  Factories 
are  gone ;  shipping  is  sunk ;  raw  materials  for  manufactures 
are  not  available ;  it  seems  almost  impossible  to  start  the  wheels 
of  industry  again.  Poverty  and  profound  discouragement  per- 
meate the  masses  of  the  people.  England  has  suffered  less  than 
the  continent;  but  England's  debt  is  enormous.  Without  pay- 
ing a  penny  of  it,  merely  to  keep  up  the  interest  and  her  old 
annual  expenditure,  she  must  raise  more  than  five  billions  of 
dollars  a  year  in  taxes.  With  her  smaller  population,  that 
means  that  each  family  must  pay  some  four  times  as  much  as 
an  American  family. 


Still  there  is  another  side.  The  world  is  freed,  we  trust, 
from  the  perpetual  cost  of  vast  navies  and  crushing  military 
establishments ;  and  it  has  learned  fruitful  lessons.  In  the 
preceding  chapters  we  surveyed  some  of  the  forces  that  made  for 
war  efficiency.  Many  of  these,  and  others  apart  from  these, 
make  also  for  healing  and  reconstruction  in  peace. 

The  whole  American  people  learned  that  when  the  rich 
family  saved  its  fragments  for  a  later  meal,  instead  of  casting 
them  to  the  garbage  can,  some  starving  child  in  Europe  had 
bread.  We  learned  to  do  our  daily  work  not  so  much  for 
private  gain  as  for  the  general  good.  We  learned  that  every 
man  who  did  not  do  work  useful  to  society  was  a  parasite, 
dangerous  to  society,  whether  he  were  a  tramp  or  a  millionaire. 
We  learned  that  by  cooperation,  in  place  of  wasteful  compe- 
tition, we  could  enormously  increase  the  productiveness  of 
our  labor  and  machinery,  and  that  by  wise  direction  we  could 
find  useful  work  for  every  worker.  Lessons  like  these,  after 
growing  into  our  life  for  two  years  of  war,  must  leave  a  mighty 
effect  upon  our  life  in  peace. 


Some  last- 
ing gains 


108       THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

Lessons  in         And  many  other  lessons  of  the  war  will  count  for  peace. 

uman  con-   rp^e  mecjjcaj  examination  of  our  drafted  men  revealed  tens  of 
servation 

thousands  of  cases  of  inefficiency  and  of  wasted  lives  due  to 

defective  eyes  or  teeth  or  feet.  Our  doctors,  dentists,  and 
surgeons  cured  most  of  these  cases,  and  augmented  tremen- 
dously our  righting  power.  Surely  we  will  now  find  a  way  to 
use  the  same  healing  forces  to  augment  our  power  for  peaceful 
industry  and  to  remove  needless  unhappiness.  Indeed  our 
schools  in  their  new  "health  crusade"  have  already  begun  to 
remake  our  nation  on  a  sounder  basis  of  body. 
The  Voca-  Very  fruitful  of  good  was  the  work  of  our  National  Board 

iona  oar  Q£  yocatJonai  Education.  Many  soldiers,  by  the  loss  of  arms 
or  legs  or  eyes,  were  disabled  from  ever  taking  up  again  the 
only  work  they  had  ever  known.  The  Vocational  Board  of 
skilled  experts  educated  and  trained  these  disabled  men,  at 
government  expense,  for  some  new  occupation  for  which  they 
showed  interest  and  fitness,  making  them  useful  and  happy 
members  of  society  instead  of  leaving  them  dependents  and 
beggars.  Many  a  real  genius  was  thus  enabled  to  do  some 
work  he  had  always  longed  to  do  but  which  he  had  never  be- 
fore been  able  to  get  into.  The  results  within  even  a  few  months 
were  so  incredibly  beneficent  that  bills  were  introduced  into 
both  Houses  of  Congress  in  the  winter  of  1919  to  preserve  this 
Vocational  organization  for  peace,  that  it  might  at  public 
expense  do  the  same  invaluable  and  merciful  work  for  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  our  people  who  every  year  are  maimed 
in  accidents  and  in  industry.  The  press  of  Congressional  work 
at  the  end  of  the  session  prevented  these  bills  from  becoming 
law,  but  the  attempt  will  be  at  once  renewed. 
New  inter-         Still    other   features    of    this    "human    conservation"    have 

est  in  child    prom;se  for  the  future.     In  Europe  there  had  been  an  alarming 
welfare  l  .  . 

loss  of  man  power  due  to  slaughter  in  battle.     Along  with  this 

was  a  falling  off  in  the  birth  rate.     These  conditions  threatened 

depopulation.     Accordingly  European  governments  were  forced 

to  legislate,  more  than  ever  before,  for  child    welfare,  —  espe- 

cially  forthesaving  of  the  lives  and  healthof  babies  and  mothers, 


HEALING   FORCES  109 

with  the  use  of  public  funds.  Even  in  the  stress  of  war,  laws 
provided  for  reasonable  rest  for  working  mothers  before  and 
after  the  birth  of  a  child,  without  loss  of  wages.  Such  civilized 
legislation  has  long  been  called  for  by  enlightened  opinion,  and 
now  it  is  sure  to  become  universal. 

Very  early,  certain  leaders  sensed  a  danger  that  the  tense  Housing 
passion  of  war  might  blind  us  unduly  to  the  rights  of  the  work-  movements 
ing  classes.  In  fighting  to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy  it 
was  supremely  necessary  to  keep  it  safe  for  labor.  For  one 
illustration,  the  vast  army  of  new  workers  in  the  shipyards 
and  munition  factories  found  no  houses  fit  for  their  families, 
and  were  threatened  with  slum  conditions  of  disease  and  squalor, 
besides  paying  exorbitant  rates  to  greedy  landlords.  Accord- 
ingly a  government's  Housing  Commission  expended  millions  of 
dollars  in  building  model  homes  for  such  workers.  This  has 
given  an  impulse,  not  to  be  wholly  lost,  to  an  old  movement  for 
better  housing  by  the  nation  for  the  workers. 

More  difficult  to  meet  was  another  problem.  Labor  had  to  The  War 
give  up  its  usual  weapon  of  strikes  in  disputes  with  employers.  l?bol 
The  public  good  demanded  this.  But  labor  could  not  be  left 
to  the  mercy  of  employers.  And  so  Congress  and  the  President 
created  a  War  Labor  Board.  This  proved  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  parts  of  the  war  government,  exercising  for  two 
years  an  influence  upon  American  life  second  only  to  that  of 
the  Supreme  Court.  Wages  were  rising  rapidly ;  and  the  pub- 
lic, only  partially  informed,  could  not  easily  understand  that 
wages  after  all  failed  to  keep  up  with  the  rising  cost  of  living, 
and  that  workingmen  were  in  danger  of  losing  the  standards  of 
living  that  they  had  won  in  long  years  of  effort. 

The  War  Labor  Board  acted  as  a  compulsory  arbitration 
board  between  Capital  and  Labor  in  those  industries  which 
concerned  the  carrying  on  of  the  war.  President  Wilson  ap- 
pointed ex-President  Taft  and  Mr.  Frank  Walsh  as  joint 
chairmen,  and  the  other  members  came  in  equal  numbers 
from  employers  and  labor  representatives.  The  Board  recog- 
nized the  right  of  labor  to  organize  and  bargain  collectively, 


110       THE  WAR  AND  THE  NEW  AGE 

the  eight-hour  day,  a  living  wage,  and  the  necessity  of  main- 
taining safeguards  against  accidents  and  disease,  and  it  en- 
couraged in  many  industries  the  organization  of  "shop  com- 
mittees" from  the  workmen  to  confer  with  the  employers  upon 
all  shop  conditions,  —  a  great  step  toward  democratizing 
industry. 

In  its  arbitrations,  the  Board  itself  had  no  power  to  enforce 
a  decision,  though  in  nearly  every  case  both  sides  submitted 
at  once  to  its  award.  But  in  some  cases  President  Wilson 
found  it  needful  to  make  the  decisions  compulsory  by  seizing 
for  public  use  the  factories  whose  owners  refused  compliance, 
or  on  the  other  side,  by  threatening  strikers,  who  had  refused 
an  award,  with  military  service,  by  withdrawing  their  exemption 
as  married  men.  The  judicial  temper  of  Mr.  Taft  and  his  legal 
training  and  open-mindedness,  made  his  services  on  this  Board 
invaluable  to  the  nation,  and  he  won  deep  and  lasting  gratitude 
from  organized  labor  for  his  understanding  of  their  need. 
The  democ-  English  employers  and  workers  during  the  war  agreed  upon 
the  principles  of  the  famous  Whitley  Report,1  providing  for 
the  joint  management  of  industries  by  Capital  and  Labor 
through  joint  councils  of  many  grades.  In  the  few  months 
since  the  armistice,  much  has  been  done  to  extend  and  confirm 
this  principle,  and  to  provide  against  unemployment,  to  shorten 
the  working  day,  and  to  guarantee  a  decent  living  wage  to 
every  man  or  woman  willing  to  work. 

In  the  winter  of  1918  the  English  Labor  Party  adopted  an 
even  more  comprehensive  plan2  for  reconstruction  after  the  war, 
along  the  same  line.  This  plan  attracted  wide  and  favorable 
attention,  and  in  Minnesota  a  convention  of  Congregational 
churches  declared  it  "the  one  great  religious  utterance  of  the 
war."  It  is  deeply  significant  that  many  larger  religious  bodies 
have  made  like  declarations  if  somewhat  less  emphatic  ones, 
—  especially  the  Catholic  Church  through  a  report  of  its  Ad- 

1  Printed  in  full  in  No.  135  (February  1919)  of  the  American  Association 
for  International  Conciliation. 

2  Printed  in  the  same. 


ratization 
of  industry 


HEALING  FORCES  111 

visory  War  Council,  and  the  Methodist  Church,  both  in  Canada 
and  the  United  States. 

In  general  these  plans  agree  on  the  following  points : 

1.  Recognition  that  industry  is  designed  for  social  service, 
not  for  private  profiteez'ing. 

2.  A  decent  wage  (not  a  bare  living)  for  each  worker. 

3.  Insurance  against  unemployment,  with  wise  provision 
by  the  government  for  using  idle  labor  in  housing  enterprises 
and  in  land  reclamation,  and,  if  necessary,  for  shortening  the 
working  day.  (There  is  no  excuse  for  a  long  working  day,  for 
any  laborer,  say  many  of  these  recent  programs,  as  long  as 
another  willing  but  idle  worker  is  standing  by,  asking  for  work.) 

4.  Democratizing  industry,  so  as  to  give  to  the  workers  a 
share  in  management  and  some  ownership  in  their  jobs. 

5.  Limitation  of  the  profits  of  capital  to  a  reasonable  amount. 

6.  The  use  of  the  surplus  (above  wages  and  "reasonable" 
profits)  for  the  public  good,  —  the  surplus  to  be  taken  by 
extension  of  income  taxes  and  by  other  new  taxes  on  mining 
royalties,  water  power,  and  so  on. 

7.  The  need  of  greater  production  by  Labor  —  for  which 
these  other  changes  must  provide  powerful  inducement. 

Five  years  ago  these  principles  would  have  sounded  wildly 
revolutionary  :  to-day  society  in  general  quietly  assents  to  them. 

Stirring  times  are  before  us  —  times  once  more  to  try  men's 
souls.  Europe  is  still  in  desperate  peril  of  social  dissolution ; 
even  America  is  not  wholly  free  from  danger  that  social  revolu- 
tion may  destroy  the  wholesome  and  progressive  evolution  of 
our  society ;  and  the  world  is  not  yet  out  of  the  peril  of  a 
frightful  shortage  of  food.  But  men  of  faith  believe  that  the 
outlook  brightens,  and  that  a  new  day  is  breaking.  Especially 
do  these  new  ideas  regarding  Labor  and  the  new  impulses  to 
human  conservation  promise  a  world  —  such  as  our  great  leaders 
have  pointed  us  toward  through  the  war  clouds —  "safe  for 
democracy  "  and  "  fit  for  heroes." 


ADVERTISEMENTS 


HISTORY 


American  Government 

By  Dr.  Frank  Abbott  Magruder,  of  Princeton  University.     i2mo, 
cloth,  487  pages. 

THE  practical  value  of  the  study  of  Civics  is  brought  out  in  the 
treatment  of  every  topic  in  the  new  American  Governme7it . 
One  of  the  purposes  of  the  book  is  so  to  equip  pupils  that  they 
will  be  able  to  act  with  intelligence  in  the  performance  of  their 
duties  as  citizens. 

While  the  importance  to  everyone  of  a  good  general  govern- 
ment is  made  clear,  our  absolute  dependence  on  local  government 
is  shown.  Most  excellent  conditions  at  Washington  cannot 
make  comfortable  a  locality  where  local  corruption  causes  the 
population  to  labor  under  disadvantages  growing  out  of  inade- 
quate sewers  and  bad  water  supply. 

Throughout  the  book  the  economic  element  in  government  is 
emphasized.  That  is,  it  is  shown  that  most  legislation  origi- 
nates in  the  practical  need  for  money  in  some  part  of  the  commu- 
nity. The  book  has  a  thorough  treatment,  not  only  of  theoretical 
government,  but  especially  of  practical  politics,  caucuses,  mark- 
ing ballots,  registration.  Woman  suffrage  and  state  prohibition 
are  also  discussed. 

The  important  bearing  which  government  has  on  social  condi- 
tions is  emphasized  by  indicating  its  connection  with  good  roads, 
with  schools,  and  with  regulation  of  commerce. 

The  enormous  influence  of  the  judiciary  is  made  clear,  and  it 
is  shown  how,  through  interpretation,  they  often  legislate.  It 
contains  a  frank  discussion  of  the  weaknesses  of  our  government, 
as  well  as  of  its  strong  points. 

The  book  is  beautifully  illustrated  with  handsome  half-tones, 
and  contains  a  large  number  of  maps,  charts,  and  plans.  The 
style  is  simple,  direct,  and  informal,  and  well  within  the  grasp  of 
young  pupils  in  the  high  school.  As  special  aids  to  pupils  and 
teachers,  questions  on  the  text  and  questions  for  discussion  to 
show  the  local  application  of  the  text  have  been  placed  at  the  end 
of  each  chapter. 

101 


HISTORY 


History  of  the  American  People 

By  Professor  Willis  Mason  West,    i 2m o,  cloth,  790  pages. 

AN  important  feature  of  this  new  History  is  its  practical 
character.  Much  attention  is  given  to  the  great  questions  of 
to-day,  and  to  those  events  in  history  which  led  up  to  them.  The 
problems  of  labor  and  capital,  and  all  those  other  matters  which 
have  to  do  with  economic  and  industrial  development,  and  with 
political  growth,  have  a  special  emphasis.  The  book  will  equip 
the  young  learner  with  a  thorough  knowledge  of  present-day 
conditions,  the  causes  which  brought  them  about,  and  of  the  best 
means  of  improving  them.  It  shows  how  political  history  is  inter- 
woven with  economic  and  social  history. 

Emphasis  is  given  to  the  development  of  the  West,  and  it  is 
made  clear  that  most  of  the  great  problems  before  the  Civil 
War  grew  out  of  conditions  which  arose  in  connection  with  the 
expansion  of  the  United  States  toward  the  west. 

The  History  is  equipped  with  more  and  better  maps  than  will 
be  found  in  other  school  histories.  The  text  is  handsomely  illus- 
trated with  many  unique  pictures.  Few  of  the  traditional  illus- 
trations found  in  most  United  States  histories  have  been  used. 

The  simple  and  direct  language  makes  the  book  well  within  the 
comprehension  of  the  young  high  school  pupil.  The  arrange- 
ment is  logical  and  the  material  is  well  organized.  The  author 
does  not  hesitate  to  show  the  weaknesses  of  democracy.  This 
is  done,  however,  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  the  pupil  with  a  robust 
and  aggressive  faith  in  our  present  form  of  government. 

This  is  the  most  up-to-date  of  the  American  histories. 

A  Source  Book  in  American  History 

By  Professor  Willis  Mason  West.     i2mo,  cloth,  608  pages. 

THIS  is  a  companion  volume  to  History  of  the  American 
People.  It  contains  much  material  never  before  accessible  to 
young  students.  No  extract  has  been  selected  unless  it  has  some 
definite  articulation  with  the  purpose  of  the  main  text. 

103 


HISTORY 

The  Ancient  World.    Revised  Edition 

By  Professor  Willis  Mason  West,  of  the  University  of  Minnesota, 

Part  One,  Greece  and  the  East.  i2mo,  cloth,  324  pages. 
Part  Two,  Rome  and  the  West.  i2mo,  cloth,  371  pages. 
Complete  Edition.    12010,  cloth,  681  pages. 

THE  New  Ancient  World  is  well  within  the  scope  of  the  abili- 
ties of  the  youngest  students  in  high  schools  and  academies. 
Its  style  is  simple,  direct,  vivid,  and  interesting,  and  never  fails  to 
impress  even  the  most  immature  reader,  who  carries  away  from  a 
study  of  this  book  a  series  of  striking  pictures  of  ancient  life. 

The  author  emphasizes  the  unity  in  historical  development; 
he  shows  that  national  life,  like  individual  life,  has  continuous 
growth  and  development,  and  that  a  knowledge  of  the  past  ex- 
plains the  present.  Every  experiment  in  government  in  ancient 
times  has  its  lesson ;  and  in  the  hands  of  Professor  West  history 
becomes  an  instrument  for  teaching  the  duties  of  modern  citizen- 
ship. 

(1)  Most  stress  is  laid  on  those  periods  and  those  persons, 
who  contributed  most  to  the  development  of  civilization. 

(2)  Space  is  found  for  the  exciting  and  the  picturesque  when- 
ever it  is  matter  of  historical  importance.  Narrative  and  biog- 
raphy abound. 

(3)  Little  weight  is  given  to  the  legendary  periods  of  Greek 
and  Roman  history,  and  the  space  thus  gained  is  devoted  to  the 
wide-reaching  Hellenic  world  after  Alexander,  and  to  the  Roman 
Empire  which  had  so  deep  an  influence  on  later  history. 

(4)  In  every  paragraph  the  leading  idea  is  brought  out  by 
italics,  and  illuminating  quotations  introduce  many  chapters. 

(5)  The  book  teaches  the  use  of  a  library  by  giving  specific 
references  to  topics  for  reports. 

(6)  There  are  forty-six  maps  and  plans,  which  are  made  the 
basis  of  study,  suggested  by  questions  given  in  the  text.  There 
are  also  one  hundred  eighty-one  illustrations  taken  from  authentic 
sources. 


HISTORY 

The  Modern  World 

By  Professor  W.  M.  WEST,  i2mo,  cloth,  794  pages. 

THIS  volume,  intended  as  a  companion  to  the  author's  Ancient 
World,  is  a  revision  of  his  Modem  History. 

As  in  the  Ancient  World,  there  has  been  a  determined  effort 
to  make  a  simple  history  that  can  be  easily  understood  b\ 
pupils  in  the  early  years  of  the  High  School.  Interesting  phases 
of  history  are  given  prominence,  difficult  ideas  have  been  avoided, 
the  language  throughout  is  simple. 

One  new  feature  of  the  Modern  World  is  five  preliminary 
chapters,  giving  an  outline  of  history  from  prehistoric  times  to 
the  accession  of  Charlemagne.  These  chapters  serve  as  an 
excellent  review  for  a  course  in  Ancient  History,  or  even  make 
it  possible  to  use  the  Modern  World  to  cover  the  general  history 
of  the  world. 

The  book  contains  nearly  two  hundred  handsome  illustrations 
and  is  provided  with  fifty-three  maps,  all  but  five  of  which  are  colored. 

Like  the  Modern  History  the  book  gives  especial  prominence 
to  the  period  since  the  French  Revolution.  The  author  treats 
"with  comparative  briefness  many  phases  of  the  history  of  the 
Middle  Ages  in  order  to  gain  adequate  space  for  the  marvellous 
nineteenth  century,  and  so  for  an  intelligent  introduction  to  the 
twentieth. 

American  Government 

By  Dr.  Frank  Abbott  Magruder,  i2mo,  cloth,  483  pages. 

THE  economic  element  in  government  is  emphasized  through- 
out this  book.  It  has  a  thorough  treatment,  not  only  of 
theoretical  government,  but  especially  of  practical  politics,  cau- 
cuses, marking  ballots,  registration. 

The  enormous  influence  of  the  judiciary  is  made  clear,  and  it 
is  shown  how,  through  interpretation,  they  often  legislate.  It 
contains  a  frank  discussion  of  the  weaknesses  of  our  government, 
as  well  as  of  its  strong  points. 

89 


HISTORY 

A  Short  History  of  England 

By  Charles  M.  Andrews,  Farnam  Professor  of  History  in  Yale 
University.  With  Maps,  Tables,  and  numerous  Illustrations.  i2mo, 
cloth,  473  pages. 

THIS  history  of  England  aims  to  present  within  the  compass 
of  about  400  pages  the  main  features  of  England's  story  from 
earliest  times  to  the  present  day.  The  book  traces  in  rapid  sur- 
vey the  development  of  the  people  and  institutions  of  England 
from  Anglo-Saxon  times  to  the  close  of  the  year  191 1,  and  shows 
by  what  steps  the  primitive  organization  of  a  semi-tribal  people  has 
been  transformed  into  the  highly  complicated  political  and  social 
structure  of  the  United  Kingdom  and  the  British  Empire.  It  re- 
tains on  a  smaller  scale  the  essential  characteristics  of  the  larger 
work  by  the  same  author,  with  some  additions,  chiefly  of  a 
geographical  and  biographical  character,  and  many  omissions 
of  details. 

The  author  tells  a  clear  and  simple  story,  avoiding  technical 
expressions  and  yet  passing  over  no  important  feature  of  the 
history  that  is  necessary  for  the  proper  understanding  of  the 
subject. 

The  aim  of  the  book  is  to  be  instructive  as  well  as  interesting. 
The  narrative  is  made  as  continuous  as  possible,  that  the  pupil 
may  follow  in  unbroken  sequence  the  thread  of  the  story.  It  is 
accompanied  with  a  large  number  of  newly  selected  illustrations 
and  an  ample  supply  of  maps  and  chronological  tables.  The 
elaborate  bibliographies  contained  in  the  larger  work  have  been 
omitted  and  only  a  small  but  selective  list  of  the  best  books  in 
brief  form  has  been  retained.  The  history  has  been  brought 
down  to  date  in  matters  of  scholarship  as  well  as  chronology,  and 
contains  many  views  and  statements  not  to  be  found  in  the  larger 
work.  It  is  designed  as  a  text-book  for  half-year,  or  elementary 
courses,  but  it  might  well  be  used  by  any  reader  desiring  a 
brief  and  suggestive  account  of  the  main  features  of  England's 
history. 

92 


HISTORY 

Readings  in  Ancient  History :    Illustrative  Extracts 
from  the  Sources 
By  William  Stearns  Davis,  Professor  of  Ancient  History  in  the 
University  of  Minnesota;  Introduction  by  Professor  WILLIS  MASON 
West. 

Volume  I :  Greece  and  the  East.     i2mo,  375  pages. 
Volume  II :  Rome  and  the  West.     i2mo,  423  pages. 

THIS  book  sets  before  the  student  beginning  the  study  of 
Ancient  History  a  sufficient  amount  of  source  material  to 
illustrate  the  important  or  typical  historical  facts  which  will  be 
mentioned  in  his  text-book.  The  volumes  are  not  designed  for 
hard  study,  to  be  tested  scrupulously  by  minute  questioning; 
they  are  meant  for  reading,  —  a  daily  companion  to  any  standard 
text-book  in  Ancient  History,  —  and  the  boy  or  girl  so  using  them 
is  sure  to  breathe  in  more  of  the  atmosphere  of  the  ancient 
world,  and  to  get  more  taste  of  the  notable  literary  flavor  per- 
vading Greek  and  Roman  history,  than  would  be  possible  from 
the  study  of  a  conventional  text-book. 

Volume  I  contains  125  different  selections,  of  which  the  follow- 
ing are  typical :  The  Ethics  of  an  Egyptian  Nobleman,  Inscrip- 
tion ;  An  Assyrian  Palace,  Maspero ;  The  Shield  of  Achilles,  The 
Iliad)  How  Glaucus  tried  to  tempt  the  Delphic  Oracle,  Herodo- 
tus ;  The  Ring  of  Polycrates,  Herodotus ;  How  Leonidas  held  the 
Pass  of  Thermopylae,  Herodotus ;  The  Last  Fight  in  the  Harbor 
of  Syracuse,  Thucydides ;  Anecdotes  about  Socrates,  Diogenes 
Laertius ;  How  Lysias  escaped  from  the  "Thirty,"  Lysias ;  How 
Elephants  fought  in  Hellenistic  Armies,  Polybius. 

Volume  II  contains  149  selections,  including:  Brutus  condemns 
his  Own  Sons  to  Death,  Livy ;  How  the  Plebeians  won  the  Con- 
sulship, Livy ;  The  Honesty  of  Roman  Officials,  Polybius ;  The 
Reign  of  Terror  under  Sulla,  Plutarch  ;  The  Wealth  and  Habits 
of  Crassus  the  Millionaire,  Plutarch ;  The  Personal  Traits  of 
Julius  Caesar,  Suetonius ;  A  Business  Panic  in  Rome,  Tacitus ; 
The  Bill  of  Fare  of  a  Great  Roman  Banquet,  Macrobius ;  How  a 
Stoic  met  Calamity  in  the  Days  of  Nero,  Epictetus ;  The  Precepts 
of  Marcus  Aurelius,  Marcus  Aurelius. 

94 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


REC'D  LD-Lki 

NOV  27 1971 


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